I thought this at first, but now think the opposite is true. His viewpoints were more diluted previously. A smaller base is of regular listeners paradoxically makes his messages stronger.
Censorship is worse on YouTube. Think of how many affiliates YouTube/google/nbc has. I’d say more than Spotify. There’s a reason AM radio has more “extreme” content than FM radio. A wider audience means more people to appease; have to cater to the common denominator.
> There’s a reason AM radio has more “extreme” content than FM radio. A wider audience means more people to appease; have to cater to the common denominator.
What? AM stations tend to have larger ranges (FM is limited by line-of-sight). There tends to be more talk on AM because the audio quality is lower (and more susceptible to interference); I would assume that talk radio (where opinions are actually being discussed) would naturally have more "extreme" content than music, where the opinions are diluted by the presence of other content.
There's no question that can't be solved with elementary school math, right?
Did he personally tell you that entering 2025 with a net worth of $175 rather than $195 million would present a serious problem for him? Does he not care more about other things in life?
Is Spotify the only source of revenue from his podcast? I don't listen to JRE, but this thread suggests he's still running third-party ads on the show. Presumably then he's still getting some portion of that $30M/year on top of what Spotify pays him.
> Spotify doesn’t play or include ads that interrupt the listening experience of Premium subscribers. However, some podcast creators may include third-party advertising, host-read endorsements, or sponsorship messages in their episodes.
Not only does he run the ads (though I suspect spotify reaps those benefits), they're randomly inserting them in the podcast now and it's annoying. Sometimes it's mid sentence.
Annoying to both pay for spotify and get hammered with ads. Granted I pay for the music, but it's still annoying as all.
Its even worse, up until a few weeks ago, you could rip his podcasts using youtube-dl. I am paying for a subscription to support him but ripping his podcasts and throwing away their garbage app in favor of Jellyfin. Now they have begun encrypting his podcasts with Widevine. :/
Since I still have to listen to ads, i'm thinking of just dropping the subscription and hoping there becomes a method to break this Widevine trash. I encounter a bug with their app on a daily basis and I am tired of it. From what I gather, there are different levels of Widevine encryption that limit video quality but the lower levels are crackable. I hope someone smarter than me tries the crack on the JRE podcast.
When this happened to me I assumed Spotify had become logged out of my account somehow. Nope, they’re injecting adverts randomly into paying customers podcasts. I cancelled Spotify that moment. I never really agreed with their attempted land grab on podcasts, this, however, I felt had really crossed a line. There are plenty of other podcasts I listen to, some without ads, supported only by Patreon, etc. so the money I spent on Spotify will get redistributed to them.
You can retire with a high standard of living for the rest of your life with that amount as a lump sum. It's not clear to me that the decision was wrong.
But you also have to assess risks. Joe is a prime candidate for getting canceled. Being on YouTube carries this risk for him.
On Spotify not only he got some cash upfront, but also significantly mitigated this risk, since platform is way more aligned (i.e. it's important business for Spotify and a footnote for YouTube).
He said not to long ago that he was actually hoping to be less famous and relevant by moving to Spotify. He wanted less lime light. However to him it backfired as more people are talking about him although less are probably actually listening.
wow, I never heard that figure, that is staggering IMO, I've never understood why Joe was famous, never got his appeal. Per WSJ, "The deal with Mr. Rogan is a multiyear licensing agreement for an amount of time that couldn’t be learned. It will likely be worth more than $100 million based on milestones and performance metrics, according to the person familiar." Wonder what those milestones are like and how important they are to Joe. https://www.wsj.com/articles/spotify-strikes-exclusive-podca...
I don’t like Joe Rogan but his earlier episodes were my first introduction to real long form, off the cuff conversations that have become pretty common now. Even relatively recently, I watched the Bernie Sanders one and felt like I hadn’t really heard Bernie Sanders just have a conversation like that for a long period. Among others I know, that, at least used to, be the appeal.
say what you want about rogan, but he is a good listener. Period. He knows when to shut the fuck up and let the guest speak.
He also can talk to people he disagrees with without going into petty word fights. Despite his image he has a lot of humility, he knows and openly admits not to be the smartest man in the room. And to me comes across as a person eager to learn and hear new ideas.
I have learnt quite a lot about being good conversationalist by studying what and how he deals with guests.
He has casual (friends) episodes that are pretty repetitive but he also invites experts from all over. Those episodes are very entertaining.
(I dont use spotify so havent been following his podcast since the move)
Well, I'm sure he was making pretty good movie before and yet he was independent, people talked about him, reporters wrote stories more often – in the long-term he could have monetized that even better.
> in the long-term he could have monetized that even better.
Could being the operative word. We're talking about "blow a million dollars on random shit every year until you die and still have multiple millions left over" amounts of money. Why would anyone who doesn't already have hundreds of millions of dollars opt for that? The whole point of this tangent in the discussion is that he probably realized his time in the spotlight was limited, so any plan that assumes longevity is statistically unlikely to come to fruition.
>I'm paying Spotify Premium and still have to listen ads during the show.
I have Spotify and don't listen to podcasts much at all. When I have, it hasn't been on Spotify and I've always been able to skip through the recording to get past the ad (either with a "skip fwd 15 secs" button or by grabbing the slider and moving it manually). Does Spotify not offer that capability?
They’ve made it simple to skip ads because each ad pops up as a track that you can scrobble to the end of. I assume they’re satisfied with this because my dragging my finger across the name of the advertiser is probably a better signal of impression than hoping I was actually present during the ad roll.
But Apple podcasts “skip 15sec” is still easier, I can do it without looking while driving.
>each ad pops up as a track that you can scrobble to the end of
The first time this happened to me (while loading up a Joe Rogan podcast), I legitimately thought Spotify was glitching out. There's no visual indication in the app that it's a temporary ad, or of how many ads you have to listen to before the episode starts. I made it to the beginning of the third ad track before giving up.
Not a single-video-file like solution, but you might think e.g. Youtube, Spotify etc could sync a separate audio file and stop the video streaming when a tab is hidden. Such a predictable waste of bandwidth, as you observe, that it might even merit browser support.
The guys who rip it to YouTube cut out the commercials, and NewPipe delivers the audio feed ad free. I'm not a big Rogan guy but even if I paid for Spotify I'd probably watch it that way.
Is there some reliable source of his podcasts on Youtube? Like a hidden channel or something that won't be taken down by copyright requests every 5 seconds?
A search for "Joe Rogan Full Podcast" (Full is a magic word on YouTube for this sort of thing, "Full Movie" "Full Episode" etc) typically works for me, but you may have to warm up the recommendation algorithm so it recommends similar channels to what you have watched before (ie. fly by night channels hosting ripped podcasts).
There's a setting to disable video podcasts and only get the audio. I don't want to watch a podcast via Spotify, and I hate that it's hidden away in settings, but it is there.
It is hard to make an argument against YT having the highest reach among vloging platforms. However, repeated guests not gaining as many Twitter followers as they did after first visit might be an indication of diminishing returns
They are are allowed to upload snippets but are limited in length and number of clips they are permitted to upload per episode. I assume they provide the allowance for purely promotional reasons. Personally, I find the clips too short to be particularly interesting
At first I thought he would be ok. His original gripe with Youtube was the censorship of controversial guests. Either he or Spotify prevented most of the controversial videos from being imported into Spotify so I guess the problem remains. Is there a platform that allows any/all controversial guests?
Advertisers don’t want to advertise next to controversial guests, so if there’s another platform they don’t have 100 megabucks to buy content with (I mean, podcasting is the most open platform of all before “exclusive podcasts” became a thing)
I don't understand why people who seek freedom from enclosed and proprietary platforms are not bigger advocates of ActivityPub and software that relies on it.
After Trump got banned from Twitter & Facebook, the right wing decided to "build" their own platforms and went to Parler or stuff like that, which wasn't a big success.
But why not using awesome tools build by the FOSS community to support their need of freedom ?
I don't share their ideas, sure, but if they used those tools, it will sure make them popular enough so other people would turn to it and start leaving Twitter, Facebook...
It looks like crypto currencies : built by geeks wanting to build a better system, and mostly used by ill intended people.
What don't we see the same thing for social networking ? Because at the end all they care about is money so they need to control everything and build their copy of Twitter or Facebook ?
> Because at the end all they care about is money so they need to control everything and build their copy of Twitter or Facebook ?
Correct, and that was the point of my post. Rogan had the platform to freely distribute his thoughts, but in exchange for money, he chose to give up control of their distribution.
Joe Rogan would be losing influence regardless if he was confined to Spotify, simply due to the competition. There is just so much more podcasting done today than there was two years ago, when he took the deal.
Pretty much haven't listened at all since his move to spotify. I don't blame him for selling out at all, but spotify is garbage for podcasts. If he went back to youtube I'd probably watch again
Just like Howard Stern (note, SiriusXM also owns Spotify). They traded a broader audience and greater influence for stability and gigantic paychecks. E.g., in Howard's case, even though his personal influence shrunk, his importance to Sirius/Spotify grew as a fraction of the subscriber base is dedicated to one talent and would otherwise unsubscribe. Howard's deal has been renewed a number of times now. I can't blame anyone involved.
this makes more sense for Stern because his audience is much narrower than Rogan's. Stern moving from terrestrial radio gave him more "freedom," whereas the same can't be said for Rogan. also, Stern took the deal when he had been established voice in radio for decades, whereas Rogan was (to my understanding) just reaching his height of popularity before the exclusivity deal began.
> this makes more sense for Stern because his audience is much narrower than Rogan's.
In what way was Stern's audience narrower at all than Rogan's? Stern narrowed his audience when he moved to Sirius, but so did Rogan, apparently. When Stern was in syndication and on E!, he had as general an audience as any radio personality (back when people listened to the radio.) Rogan has a very narrow demographic as far as I can see, and virtually that entire demo is a subset of who listened to or watched Stern during what was something like a 15 year long peak.
> Rogan has a very narrow demographic as far as I can see, and virtually that entire demo is a subset of who listened to or watched Stern during what was something like a 15 year long peak.
really? I was under the impression that Rogan skewed much younger. (at least compared to the Stern audience when he made his platform jump.) and sure Stern narrowed his audience when he moved to satellite, but wasn't he already a bit past his prime at that point?
Stern tried to adapt, and with a degree of success. He came from the "Shock Jock", Andrew Dice Clay era, but shifted in recent years to become much softer and "woke".
Echochamber effect here I presume. Joe Rogan is doing just fine on Spotify. He can choose not to extend at the end of his contract, go back to YouTube and continue just where he left off.
No, it asks for any specific example of how one might suggest he is doing "just fine". I would just like to see why someone thinks this article is incorrect, not simply that they think so. I would be fine with someone suggesting an alternative to constant growth as an example.
It's questionable whether online 'influencers' actually influence anyone beyond getting them to watch or listen to their show. What they definitely have is an audience, and that is valuable to the advertisers and marketers who do influence people, as well as prospective guests who want to promote themselves or a cause. I think influencers' main value for advertisers is acting as a magnet for certain demographics, providing another way to do targeted marketing.
Which is an absolutely fascinating case-study! It's easy to just write it off as "kids mimicking content creator for attention" but it goes so much deeper than this because it's a learned subconscious reaction to stress. It's like tapping your feet or biting your nails but interesting because it's verbal. It's kinda like if you say "like" or "um" to fill space when talking you never really have to think about it but you can stop if you practice.
Maybe Joe's viewers will all start doing stand-up. :-)
There was a marketing study of influencers from Rakuten Marketing that indicates that advertising through influencer channels produces positive sales results. But again, it's not clear that the influencer actually drove the purchases, versus just drawing an audience that was predisposed to make those purchases in the first place.
Not true. The owner of a TV station gets paid, and they aren't influencing anyone. They're simply brokering advertising. I'm open to evidence that influencers actually exert personal influence on their audience, I just haven't seen any yet.
This is less a problem for Joe than it is for his advertisers. I wonder about the effectiveness of pre-roll ads vs extremely annoying mid-sentence ad breaks scattered through the episode. Use to be joe was one of the more enjoyable blocks of 3 hour content to listen to because there were no commercial breaks.
I stopped listening to him around the time that he signed to spotify. But I think that was coincidental. I just got sick of how he's such a nutter and a dummy -- even though I like many things about who he is and what he does.
Spotify video leaves a lot to be desired as compared to youtube. They should stick to audio and improve on it. I dont understand, why do I need to go through ads for JR show even though I pay for spotify premium.
The best part of youtube is that one could search through and get excerpts of the video. I could easily find JRs tidbits without the need of going through the entire interview. I still see some of the older excerpts in youtube, but less so in spotify.
I stopped watching purely due to the Spotify deal. I was willing to give it a try until I saw that they were memoryholing episodes. I might be in the minority here but it felt like a betrayal. If he wanted more money he could’ve invested in his own platform like many others and people would’ve followed. There’s plenty of other content in the sea.
I'm not particularly a "fan", but I do enjoy listening to some JRE episodes when he has interesting guests like Andrew Huberman. I don't care about losing access to old podcasts any more than I care about Netflix pulling certain movies. That's just the reality of all streaming services. Content gets removed all the time for all sorts of reasons. If you want to maintain access to something then you'll have to make a local copy on hardware you own.
They don't burn books, they just remove them. Those episodes happened, and removing them is a form of gaslighting. If they find the content objectionable then putting a disclaimer, if it is objectionable enough then removing the entire series from the platform could be an option, but it is lost history. In this case the artist doesn't care, and probably is happy to sweep those episodes under the rug. It is like how Disney wishes they hadn't made "Song of the South".
The problem, as with every memory-holed episode ever, is that people watching/listening for the first time (or say they only use X platform to consume whatever) will never know they existed.
In other words, lying by omission is still lying.
Edit to add- just to show how unbelievably petty the reasoning can be- Tyler Perry threw a bitch-fit about an episode of Boondocks and had it pulled (as was an episode ripping on BET when they screamed). For something that was pure satire and a cartoon they not only had it pulled from airing, they now no longer list the episodes at all on Hulu/HBOMax, pretending they never existed at all, even re-numbering the episodes.
All because of Tyler Perry/Some BET exec's ego? GTFO.
We have Holocaust deniers while still having people alive that survived it. We have people constantly denying proven, recent history and some people think it's ok to censor shit and pretend it never happened and it'll be all roses and sunshine.
That isn't what we are speaking about here. If youtube buys the rights to a show and uploads 'their version' of it with episodes missing and re-numbered so no one will notice any are missing, they are controlling a narrative.
They should at least have a disclaimer about the missing episodes.
Shame. Not to condone these people, but since getting along with everyone was Joe Rogan's thing, I think they should've embraced it. But Joe was most likely not glad to preserve that part of his career either, otherwise I assume he would protest.
$100 million is a lot of incentive to not protest. The line between actually important and kinda important gets really well defined when you throw that much money on the table.
> A memory hole is any mechanism for the deliberate alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression that something never happened.
Some episodes are no longer available, as if Spotify wants everyone to forget that they even exist.
Episodes featuring Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones etc. In other words, guests that offend the progressive attitudes of Silicon Valley
Milo Yiannopoulos is a self-proclaimed white supremacist, that offends more than "the progressive attitudes of Silicon Valley," it offends everyone that's not a white supremacist.
Alex Jones testified to being a performance artist and hosts a talk show purely to hawk merchandise. Does that really fit the mold of a thought-provoking podcast like Rogan's?
What happened? Liberalism used to have a solid footing on the essentials of the constitution. If your enemies or people you don't like don't have rights, you don't either. The ACLU used to understand this probably better than most organizations and today, like much of CA and NY, they're lost.
> The ACLU used to understand this probably better than most organizations and today, like much of CA and NY, they're lost
This is a line I've read from texts dating back to at least 1973 by conservative authors, nearly verbatim.
I think cultural mores change and conservatives have a hard time adapting.
Alternatively, they've simply been dishonest with themselves since just after WWII -- start with the nonsense about FDR allowing Pearl Harbor to happen -- because they believe the ends justify the means.
>Milo Yiannopoulos is a self-proclaimed white supremacist
I think Milo is a scumbag, personally, but where did he self-proclaim that he's a white supremacist?
>Alex Jones testified to being a performance artist
No, he didn't. His lawyer attempted to argue that he was during a lawsuit, as a defense against full culpability for his actions. Lawyers (understandably) try to pull out everything they can to help their client. There's no evidence Jones himself has ever said this or thinks this.
Although most of his non-watchers seem to think he's just a con artist, after watching a cumulative dozens of hours of him on camera over the years, I'm convinced it's not an act and that he genuinely believes pretty much everything he's saying (except for cases where he's attempting to do a comedy bit). Unfortunately, a lot of people in the US believe all of the things he believes - and not necessarily because they're hearing it from him. They all drink from the same watering holes. In my opinion, this is why it's actually a lot more frightening than con artistry or performance art.
I would be thrilled if both of those people simply ceased to exist, but I think it's dishonest to delete and "forget" old episodes of a show because you later decide that the guests on those episodes were terrible people.
(I don't consider it material that presumably Spotify required deleting them as part of the deal. Rogan agreed to those terms, so clearly the money was more important to him.)
Right, so don't listen to those episodes. I, on the other hand, like hearing both sides so I can make an informed decision on why I disagree with whomever.
'So and so is bad, I heard it from X' has never been good for any human society.
Pretending the episodes don't exist is rewriting history.
'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'
Personal point- if I saw Alex Jones personally I would not want to be him. He has, for his own enrichment, destroyed personal relationships, caused me endless arguments with friends/family and is a walking detrament to society. I hate with a passion the garbage he spews to sell some garbage fake pills. But I still believe he has a right to be heard.
Nobody has a right to be heard. He has a right to speak. People like Rogan have a megaphone and are choosing who to give it to. Would you choose Alex Jones?
Sure, Alex Jones is a crackpot but why should you, or anyone for that matter, be allowed to prevent others from speaking to an audience that has decided to listen?
What do you expect to happen when the balance of power, majority opinion, etc inevitably shifts and we find ourselves on the other side?
Also how do you know that either of those people are what others have told you they are? If you're unable to listen to them because they've been depersoned everywhere, you have no way of knowing if they're truly as represented or have been character assassinated. I'm not trying to convince you that either of them aren't who you think they are (from what I've seen, you're not far off) but rather have you see that you could be wrong about them (or others in the future) if you are not allowed to hear them first hand and only get views of them filtered through others.
On episode #1682 he talks about both figures. He was saying he does feel a responsibility to vet his guests so that he doesn’t just have crazies using his platform to spew vile, but ultimately that neither figure harms anyone just by being a guest on a podcast. He talked about how even if you hate Alex or Milo, you can still gain something from listening to them speak. Maybe you can figure out why you hate them, or maybe listening to them directly will make you understand them in a different light.
Maybe this is a 1990s George Carlin thing to say, but so what if Milo offends people? Should we only be allowed to hear things that don’t offend us?
I also like being able to justify intolerance towards anyone I want by labeling them "intolerant". Same as only caring about those I want to care about and only supporting free speech that I agree with. Makes everything much easier.
It can often be challenging to determine intent in written form, and more so in a forum context, but that reads as incredibly passive aggressive.
I'd be happy to debate this further if you were willing to do so in good faith rather than intentionally twisting my words. Otherwise, you can label me as "anti-free speech" and call it a day having won the war for freedom on the internet.
Rejecting people that promote the "Sandy Hook was fake!" conspiracy theory and even harassing the parents of murdered children isn't a way to avoid offending the "progressive attitudes of Silicon Valley". It's just common decency. ... Can we at least set the bar at that level -- that we _don't_ harass the parents of murdered children for clicks?
Because there’s so little cross pollination today everyone lives in a bubble. If your Facebook is full of right-wing stuff, you only watch Fox News and only listen to Larry Elder, you’ve got an echo chamber, breeding ground for radicalization.
Having a wide variety of guests actually fights that. You listen to Bernie Sanders, then Alex Jones, then Ben Shapiro, then Edward Snowden. Rogan breaks the echo chamber. People who might only listen to Alex Jones have a chance at listening to Bernie.
Why? Why do I suddenly need to know everyone's take about everything? Why is it important that we know what our favourite actor thinks about Trump?
Everything is publicity. It's not achieving some important social need, its driving people towards new products. Interviewing Alex Jones isn't doing anything except making more people know what an Alex Jones is.
Is that why the kardashians are so famous, because their continued media presence is our opportunity to see if they make sense? No, they are just crap and giving them more sunlight just gives them more undue fame, money, and power.
"We must remove that stuff because those ideas are dangerous/offensive, and if you disagree with removing it then you must agree with that filth!" is extremely helpful to the sorts of people who do edgy stuff to attract attention and then try to memoryhole it once they get a big audience.
I think the truth is the opposite: there are no dangerous ideas. "Sandy Hook was fake!" is stupid and wrong, but the way to defeat it is exposure, not erasure. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Looking at things through a consequentialist soda straw like that is a terrible way to make decisions -- it is like trying to decide if I will drive or walk solely based on the number of birds I might kill. Decisions are much larger than this single aspect.
Some people hearing a crazy idea might adopt it. Some might criticize it. Some might learn how crazy ideas work. Some might adopt it for a little while, then reject it, and be wiser through the experience. Someone who goes on a crusade to fix this one falsehood might be exposed to it. You cannot know what all effects the sum of a discussion has.
But I can certainly tell you this: censorship doesn't work. It didn't work in ancient Rome. It didn't work in the Holy Roman Empire. It didn't work in Soviet Russia. It doesn't work in Communist China. It's not working right now for vaccine disinformation. Driving crazy ideas underground does not make them disappear, and it does not make them unpopular -- it makes them spread without criticism. And in fact, telling people they can't do something generally makes them want to do it. It appears to work for a little while, but I cannot think of a single historical case in which this actually worked out. Somehow the banned ideas always seem to survive beyond the death of the regime that banned them.
We will always have crazy ideas. We will always have crazy people that buy them. Depriving them of respectability is perhaps a little helpful, but opens up a different danger: just who gets to decide what and who is crazy? I didn't vote for you, and I didn't vote for Spotify either.
What's "naïve" is you or anyone else thinking they have the power to "nudge people into better patterns", which is exactly what the kind of behavior you're promoting attempts to accomplish.
You can't, and you never will. Culture evolves slowly, and humans even slower.
> What's "naïve" is you or anyone else thinking they have the power to "nudge people into better patterns"
> You can't, and you never will. Culture evolves slowly, and humans even slower.
There is ample evidence since at least World War I, that both 'positive' PSA type information and 'negative' propaganda/counter information/psy ops absolutely have an effect.
Reminder that the Wakefield fraud in 1998, on M.M.R. vaccines and autism, started a negative sentiment towards vaccination and is directly attributed to the measles outbreaks (and deaths) across the developed world (Amplified by Oprah's platform). [1]
Reminder that still today many people will claim carrots give you better vision (they are indeed healthy). This was a counter-info operation from the British, claiming they were providing Air Control with carrots, in order to hide the existing of newly invented RADAR technology against German Bombers. [2]
The argument isn't that false information doesn't have an effect. It's that your attempts to manipulate people through censorship has the opposite effect.
And keeping Jones off of Rogan would've accomplished what? Someone who thinks the gummint is out to git 'em would believe a different 'gummint is out to gitcha' conspiracy theory instead?
I don't think you can win that battle. The 'Proctor & Gamble are satan worshipers' meme spread across the country before the internet existed. You can't stop people from spreading nonsense, but engaging with and ridiculing nonsense at least makes sure the counter-memes exist, when someone is ready to hear them.
>You can't stop people from spreading nonsense, but engaging with and ridiculing nonsense at least makes sure the counter-memes exist, when someone is ready to hear them.
You can do both. There is evidence that deplatforming works. It isn't perfectly effective, but not giving cranks access to the biggest megaphones and most virulent information-spreading engines in human history does in fact seem to inhibit their ability to spread. Doing so doesn't stop anyone from engaging with or ridiculing them.
But, point of order, we've been "engaging and ridiculing" for years now, it hasn't worked yet. Everyone says sunlight is the best disinfectant, but as far as I can see, this particular strain of infection feeds on sunlight.
'Works' in what sense? Does it make the sort of people who believe this stuff less credulous? Or does it just make them less likely to listen to the specific blowhard being deplatformed, and less likely to believe the specific conspiracy theory being peddled? It's not like there's a shortage; both conspiracy theories and con-men are fungible.
(And it goes without saying, that any deplatforming/censorship argument sounds strongest against something patently ridiculous like Sandy Hook not having happened, weaker against something controversial, and positively diabolical against something you personally believe to be true. If you assume the person in charge of the deplatforming is someone you politically disagree with, are you still as big a fan?)
Let me ask you this - if deplatforming doesn't work, what are all of the people concerned about it worried about?
It works in the sense that it deprives people of the power-multiplying capabilities of large platforms to spread disinformation. It doesn't stop the spread, but it does slow the spread. Yes, Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists would still exist without Alex Jones egging them on, but there would have been fewer of them, and they might not have been so invested in the meme that they decided to harass victims of the shooting.
>And it goes without saying, that any deplatforming/censorship argument sounds strongest against something patently ridiculous like Sandy Hook not having happened, weaker against something controversial, and positively diabolical against something you personally believe to be true.
Yes, that's why I'm making it against the first group, and not the second or third. I'm saying if you're spreading patently ridiculous nonsense like "Sandy Hook was a hoax," and that ridiculous nonsense is doing actual societal harm, it's perfectly legitimate for platforms to decide that you should take your big breadboard and tinfoil hat elsewhere.
>If you assume the person in charge of the deplatforming is someone you politically disagree with, are you still as big a fan?
I'm not supporting deplatforming in the case of simple political disagreement, so in that case, no.
I think the main thing we disagree on is: I don't think Alex Jones has any power, or changes anyone's mind. He doesn't have a silver tongue, a deft wit, or evidence on his side. He's just a schmuck who tosses out bullshit to see what sticks.
What you're dancing around, though, is that you can't talk about why this particular piece of bullshit sticks if you're pretending it's apolitical. The Sandy Hook hoax idea, as I understand it, is the theory that there are forces within the US government plotting to restrict gun rights, and they staged a fake school shooting to gain support. Right?
Well, you can pin the second bit on Alex Jones, at least partly, but the other part, the "there are forces within the US government plotting to restrict gun rights" part, that's a meme that the mainstream right has been pushing relentlessly for something like two generations. And it is not a conspiracy theory; it's literally true (albeit often exaggerated).
So my point, the reason I think deplatforming Jones would be ineffectual, is that the damage is already done. A generation has been convinced that the anti-gun brigade is so powerful and pernicious that faking a school shooting is something they might realistically do. That is the problem. I don't know if that problem is solveable, but I don't think deplatforming people like Alex Jones really affects it.
This description of Alex Jones doesn't sit well with the fact that Jones was a friend of a sitting POTUS and has thousands of fanatical listeners driving around with 'InfoWars' bumperstickers. He may be a blithering loon but he's also powerful and influential.
"Deplatforming" works, because what you just did is use a nicer sounding euphemism for censorship. Obviously with censorship you can hinder the spread of information, regimes like the CCP do this very successfully. The question is at what cost, and who decides what is misinformation? Does it actually result in a net positive for society over time?
The most livable societies I know are all open societies. Once you start censoring this you might also want to censor that and the misinformation here, and this doesn't sound right either... Maybe your own comment is misinformation. Maybe saying we need more restrictions on speech is a dangerous idea. Should I lobby for your speech to be deplatformed, as you call it?
>The most livable societies I know are all open societies.
If by "open" societies you mean societies in which no form of "censorship" is practiced by any entity, at any level, then no, you do not, because such societies do not exist. Even the United States has limits placed on speech at the Federal level (the level limited by the First Amendment) and elsewhere. Even public squares are regulated. And on top of everything else, society itself imposes "censorship" through cultural and social norms.
Certainly speech on private property can be regulated. You can't go into a restaurant and start campaigning or venting about the government. Platforms on the web, which are also private property, have always been likewise regulated by their owners. I guarantee this is the case in whatever livable societies you're referring to.
>Once you start censoring this you might also want to censor that and the misinformation here, and this doesn't sound right either... Maybe your own comment is misinformation.
Yes, the slippery slope argument, all forms of censorship must inevitably lead to arbitrary censorship something something Orwell something Stalinist purges. At this point it's been invoked so often that it's become something of a thought-terminating cliche. All I can say is I don't believe that the ability of site owners and moderators to police and control content - an ability they've had forever mind you - will somehow inevitably lead to the boot stomping on our heads forever. If you disagree we'll have to agree to disagree.
After all, as stated earlier, there are no societies in which no form of censorship occurs. If the slippery slope argument were valid, all societies would currently be dictatorships. That societies exist which you consider "open" suggests that
>Should I lobby for your speech to be deplatformed, as you call it?
Lobby whom? We're talking about the policies of specific private entities, you're the one who predictably brought up CCP style authoritarianism despite no one actually arguing for governments to "deplatform" anyone from society. But sure - if you think my speech is doing real world harm in the same way as Alex Jones or anti-vaxxers, feel free to "lobby" the mods about it. That would, after all, be your free speech right would it not?
And yet increasing cases of such censorship are exactly what we observe. A recent extreme example was an Oxford professor of epidemiology who had his post removed for 'false information'. They're also outright banning all News in Australia now: https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2021/02/18/exper...
>feel free to "lobby" the mods about it.
Sure, we both know they won't remove you. If I were an elite and actually had the power to have your voice removed from all popular platforms, as well as access to Visa transactions and banking etc. like it happened to Jones, you'd still support it, right?
It's of course known these Silicon Valley corporations aren't really multi-billion dollar businesses, but collectivized people who have personhood and free speech rights. By creating oligopolies and controlling what information we view, they only exercise their rights as citizens the world.
1. Is that all publicity is equivalent. Rogan is no James Randi. He's much more likely to nod along with anything a guest says than debunk it. His podcast is entertainment, not a crucible for the truth.
2. Is that every time we broadcast nonsense that fewer people believe it and society as a whole becomes wiser. If this were true, then when the ex-President talked about drinking bleach you'd expect bleach ingestion calls to 911 to decrease. In reality they increased at least on a short timescale. On a long enough timescale, maybe the anti vaccination population will fall below the level it was when Dr. Wakefield published his infamous anti vaccination paper. Given the last few decades of suffering, I'd guess there are better ways to educate the public.
I think you've misunderstood which direction I imagine the sunlight going here.
1. You seem to think that Joe Rogan is not very reliable or trustworthy. How do you know that? Because of past interviews where he nodded along with a crackpot, right? Isn't that valuable information? Doesn't that help you evaluate new information you get from him?
2. The choice we are faced with is not, "Should we allow nonsense to be broadcasted"; it is "What should we do in response to it." In each of these cases, I think it's pretty important to be aware of what happened.
If you could time travel back to, say, 2000, and you had a choice of either trying to "bury" Wakefield's work to keep people from hearing about it or to promote the idea that his work was bunk, which would you choose? I think the latter would be more effective, wouldn't it?
People are not morally monolithic -- having been awful in one moment doesn't mean they can't be helpful or insightful in the next. I wouldn't listen in to someone harassing grieving parents, but I might listen to someone who haddone that, if they were talking about something else.
This sort of hyperventilating moralistic fear of certain people makes me laugh, in its similarity to Victorian or conservative Christian communities. You cannot possibly want anything to do with that vagabond! I don't know, he has some vices, but he also has some perspective I am enriched by hearing. You don't have to fear sinners. Don't imitate them, but your life will be richer if you're less of a prude.
Milo is a gadfly. He offends me sometimes, too. And sometimes he has stinging observations I don't hear anywhere else. I don't want to listen to him every day, but I would be poorer for having never made the acquaintance. Alex Jones is energetic and occasionally unhinged, and when he says something completely insane that also happens to be true, I find it a comedy experience like no other. But he can also be a wakeup call to some of the naive views I hold. I don't want to listen to him every day, either, but I would again be poorer if I never had.
But at the end of the day, I really resent gatekeepers who want to make these sorts of decisions for me. I read history -- which means I read lots of things lots of very evil people have written. I would actually rather have the opportunity to read and study Hitler's words than have them banned on the assumption that they are too dangerous for me. I would like to think I am wise enough to judge evil for what it is, and I would like to be able to prove that to myself against real villians of history. The versions I was given in elementary school hardly illustrate the dangers. Goodness knows I can't avoid encountering dangerous ideas in the real world anyway, so what is the point of trying to protect me? I would rather be strong than safe.
People are not children. They can handle reading history's dangerous ideas, and they can handle hearing society's dangerous ideas. It is better to encounter those ideas on Joe Rogan with thoughtful and open questioning and discussion, than to encounter them quiet and unopposed in private. Strong people are better than safe ones. Victorian moralizing and shunning didn't really work out for them either.
Surely a company choosing not to publish certain material falls under the umbrella of their free speech rights? Or are we all for compelled speech now? If someone has a podcast that Spotify carries and then say they think the Holocaust was a good thing, is Spotify committing a sin by removing that episode or kicking that person off their platform?
Pro tip: needing to make up a scenario of Nazis usually means you're creating a straw man.
Spotify is well within their rights to pick and choose who to platform. I, personally, think de-platforming is counterproductive. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones may be trash human beings, but I don't think Spotify having Rogan's interview with him -- which by the way is a lot of Jones looking insane, and Joe challenging him every step of the way -- is in any way equivalent to "Spotify supports Alex Jones." Censoring people just pushes them to echo chambers.
Yeh LOL sandy hook denial is for progressive silicon Valley types who aren't progressive. Maybe Spotify doesn't want to be the 'dive bar' of web platforms.
If you aren't offended by Alex Jones you got deeper issues, or perhaps are just ignorant to his white nationalist messaging.
I am offended by him and at the same time don't mind him having a platform to express his "opinions" which apparently is an unpopular opinion on this site.
Which is funny to me because JRE is the reason we are rid of Milo. The JRE also didn’t do any favors for Candace Owens or Dave Rubin. I don’t see why they would memory hole those episodes but at least they’re on YouTube.
I didn't like them banning episodes too. There were internal movements from Spotify employees (liberal Silicon Valley workers) who wanted episodes completely censored and removed. Joe talked about it a few times and I read some articles.
The irony is that by moving to these liberal employees' platform, he's losing influence :)
By creating a crappy podcast platform they've ensured they get what they want and he ends up diminished.
Unless Spotify publicly disclosed which employees said something along with their political beliefs, I think the best we can do here is describe them as Spotify employees.
Arguably there are reasons to dislike Joe's podcast for people all over the political spectrum.
All regular media consumption is down, ratings for all news is down, I think we're all suffering from social media consumption fatigue, and there's is also an explosion of podcasts to listen to now.
The Economist has daily 45 minutes, Conan O'Brien is on audio only etc..
And he might actually have a broader audience than before, does it matter that much that guests 'new follower' metrics are down?
I think there's a broader context to consider here.
Yeah I know I stopped listening since the show went exclusive. I didn't listen to every single episode he did, but I did listen pretty regularly. I have not seen a single one since and don't really care to.
I won't get an account with a company just to hear what you have to say. If you require that, as far as I'm concerned your influence just waned a little. I'm steadfast and unflinching in this, it is a firm rule I have.
To be fair... his move to Spotify coincided with him spewing more and more anti-vax and anti-mask drivel that I don't have any interest in listening to.
He was always into the conspiracy stuff, and it was usually pretty light and interesting. The tone and guests definitely changed around the time he moved to Austin (no knock on Austin, I love that place). Politics and stuff I guess.
Me too. I think his friend circle became almost entirely right leaning since the move and his viewpoints are no longer balanced. I listen to a few other podcasters who definitely can't called lefties, yet they manage to present things in nuanced and less biased ways. It doesn't seem like a very difficult thing to do, yet he fails at it miserably.
I don't think that's accurate. Do you have some links or anything to back that up? Like actual transcripts, not some media interpretation.
"People say, do you think it's safe to get vaccinated? I've said, yeah, I think for the most part it's safe to get vaccinated. I do. I do," Rogan said on the podcast. "But if you're like 21 years old, and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I'll go no. Are you healthy? Are you a healthy person?"
"If you're a healthy person, and you're exercising all the time, and you're young, and you're eating well," Rogan continued, "like, I don't think you need to worry about this."
If this is what you are referring to, is that really anti-vax?
Yes that's anti-vax. We get vaccinated not just to protect ourselves from death, but also to protect those around us by reducing the transmission of disease.
Except that all the existing evidence suggests your argument is backwards. Whilst Covid-19 vaccination doesn't provide full protection for either the vaccinated or those around them, it seems to be much more effective at protecting the person being vaccinated against severe symptoms, hospitalization and death than it does at stopping them catching and spreading the virus to others. As far as I can tell, literally the only reason vaccination is primarily framed as a way of protecting others is because that framing fits better into left-wing politics; it has nothing to do with the actual evidence.
According to the CDC, each vaccine efficacy at preventing the recipient from catching the virus. To your point they also reduces severity of symptoms. Looks like the J&J one ain't that great at prevention.
Based on evidence from clinical trials in people 16 years and older, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 95% effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed infection with the virus that causes COVID-19 in people who received two doses and had no evidence of being previously infected.
Based on evidence from clinical trials, in people aged 18 years and older, the Moderna vaccine was 94.1% effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection in people who received two doses and had no evidence of being previously infected.
The J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine was 66.3% effective in clinical trials (efficacy) at preventing laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection in people who received the vaccine and had no evidence of being previously infected. People had the most protection 2 weeks after getting vaccinated.
That's from the clinical trials, which are like two variants behind what people are actually being exposed to in the wild right now. The vaccines are much less effective at preventing people from catching and spreading the currently-circulating Delta variant than the original one which those numbers were based on. Firstly, they don't stop people from catching the virus nearly as well, and secondly vaccinated people who do catch the virus seem to have comparable viral load and spread it just as well as the unvaccinated. Also, the Delta variant is just better at spreading in general, which itself means a more effective vaccine would be needed in order to prevent everyone from inevitably catching it.
It's more nuanced than that. Prior to the delta variant, there was strong evidence that the vaccines also prevented you from being a carrier of the virus in most cases.
The calculus with delta is different, as it does seem that vaccinated people can spread delta. But the severity of that spread, as well as the amount of time a vaccinated person can spread it, is certainly lower than that of an unvaccinated person.
Yeah, it is! People thinking they don't need the vaccine are contracting COVID and acting like human petri dishes for new variants to arise from. It's also ignoring the reality of COVID aftereffects (like parosmia) that affect young people who recover too.
How do you come to that conclusion? Specifically your conflusion that Joe Rogan is "anti-vax" from your sample of him replying "I'll go no". If that's all it takes for you to label someone, is someone saying "I'll go no" to a homosexual encounter also anti-gay? Is someone who doesn't agree with their governments policy anti-government? Might want to relax a bit...I hear opinions are like certain body parts. We've all got them, including Joe Rogan, and getting up in arms about it doesn't help you or anyone else.
I don't know anything about what Rogan has said about vaccinations (I'm not the parent you're replying to), but I still think this is a very disappointing, dangerously misinformed take on his part. He's flat-out wrong; if you're 21, generally healthy, exercising, etc., you absolutely should get the vaccine. Also note that at first glance what he says sounds reasonable. He's not the frothing-at-the-mouth anti-vaxxer spouting garbage about vaccines containing tracking chips, or part of the idiot crowd decrying vaccination as somehow an affront to their liberty. He's saying something reasoned, in a presumably calm manner, and that will push even reasonable people believe it, even though he is completely wrong.
These takes encourage people to only think about themselves. Even if a young, generally healthy (unvaccinated) person is unlikely to get sick (or worse), they could still very easily end up an asymptomatic carrier, and give it to someone who isn't in such great shape. Beyond that, an unvaccinated host is also a great place for the virus to mutate and spread, prolonging the pandemic for everyone.
Everyone who is eligible and medically able needs to get vaccinated. I'm getting super tired of all this garbage; the US has had the vaccine supply and capability to be out of the pandemic by now, but the unvaccinated are screwing over the rest of us who are doing the right thing.
> He's flat-out wrong; if you're 21, generally healthy, exercising, etc., you absolutely should get the vaccine.
While I generally agree with you, this is an opinion, not an unquestionable fact. Especially as we're seeing elevated risk of myocarditis in young men, there's absolutely a legitimate debate here.
I don't necessarily think Rogan is the one advancing that debate, but presenting opinions as facts is not helping anyone.
> Everyone who is eligible and medically able needs to get vaccinated. I'm getting super tired of all this garbage; the US has had the vaccine supply and capability to be out of the pandemic by now
That's a rather polarized position... what facts or experienced led you to this conclusion you stated? Specifically "the unvaccinated are screwing over the rest of us who are doing the right thing".
> That's a rather polarized position... what facts or experienced led you to this conclusion you stated? Specifically "the unvaccinated are screwing over the rest of us who are doing the right thing".
The fact that the unvaccinated are taking up all of the hospital beds in certain areas of the country..?
"Specifically "the unvaccinated are screwing over the rest of us who are doing the right thing"."
They're disproportionately taking up resources in hospitals for example, which do not have unlimited resources. We could be having a much better response right now [here in the U.S.] with less load on hospitals, but we're not, because of selfish and/or gullible people.
They're also making the pandemic & related economic measures last longer than necessary. I can't wait for the next shutdown(s) as more variants evolve then spread and hospitals become even more inundated. Meanwhile I look at places like South Korea which have had life continue relatively normal because people actually wear masks there instead of politicizing them.
Interesting. I'm not pro/anti vax or anything else, but I imagined unhealthy people were taking up hospital beds disproportionally. I was interested in why you felt the way you do; thanks for sharing your opinion.
The entire raison d'être of hospitals is to treat unhealthy people when they get sick and lessen or prevent healthy individuals from getting sick. So that statement is tautological.
Unvaccinated/maskless people [by choice] who then get sick with COVID and go to the hospital anyways are unnecessarily draining hospitals of their limited resources. Hospitals were already understaffed before COVID, and now unvaccinated/maskless people want the workers at hospitals to risk their lives and work around the clock to benefit people who basically flipped them (and science) off until they got sick and changed their tune. It's so hypocritical.
The highly infectious aspect of the disease makes it different from e.g. poor lifestyle habits or one off decisions. Every single COVID patient is taking up a bed/resources that could have gone to people who are unhealthy for reasons outside of their control, and there are hospitals completely at capacity due to COVID.
And not making a choice to be pro or anti-vax is a choice in itself. Choosing to not have an opinion means implicitly supporting the status quo, which where I am would mean implicitly supporting a bunch of unvaccinated, maskless people by choice draining our resources and having a flagrant disregard for their fellow citizens. That statement makes about as much sense as saying "I'm not pro or anti -science-".
There needs to be a very good reason(s) why one would be "neutral" about vaccines or science. Internet conspiracies don't count as good reasons, and the other side has has actual research and facts backing it up. Saying that one is just "neutral" about science or vaccines is semantically exactly the same as saying that one is anti-science or vaccines.
>Choosing to not have an opinion means implicitly supporting the status quo, which where I am would mean implicitly supporting a bunch of unvaccinated, maskless people
It most certainly does not, at least to a rational person. That's very cultish thinking.
The main purpose of getting the vaccine isn't just to protect yourself -- it's to reduce the chances of you transmitting it to others. It's about herd immunity, not personal immunity. Whether you're young and healthy is irrelevant.
Herd immunity is not possible with our current vaccines[1], which means that coronavirus will continue to propagate through society whether you decide to get vaccinated or not.
You can make the argument that getting vaccinated reduces the risk of you being hospitalized, which keeps a bed and a nurse available for someone else.
Thats a much more valid argument to make.
>Herd immunity is not possible with our current vaccines, which means that coronavirus will continue to propagate through society
This is my understanding as well, which was why I decided to get vaccinated. If avoiding infection is impossible in the long run, I should help my immune system prepare for it.
I wonder how differently things would be going if the campaign was "Covid is here to stay. You will get it. Get vaccinated."
>I wonder how differently things would be going if the campaign was "Covid is here to stay. You will get it. Get vaccinated."
I actually heard someone say that today, but I don't remember where. Maybe Breaking Points, but not sure.
I was certainly rattled when I saw amateur video of hospital workers stacking bodies in a freezer truck in NYC. They should do more like that. As morbid as it is, it gets the point across.
> The main purpose of getting the vaccine isn't just to protect yourself -- it's to reduce the chances of you transmitting it to others. It's about herd immunity, not personal immunity.
Not about personal immunity? Why did we roll it out by age group then?
Older people as a group require more care when they get sick. Additionally, elderly group living was being hit the hardest by the pandemic, especially early on.
It wasn't about saving the most lives per se. It was about reducing the load on the medical system. I suspect those outcomes are strongly correlated.
How can you think it was about anything but saving lives? The cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics in this thread is incredible. The vaccine offers personal immunity thats why we gave it to the most at risk groups first.
This has been my experience as well. Another commenter mentioned this but I also feel like guests have been less interesting since the move to Austin. I used to be a daily listener now I feel like it can be months between interesting episodes.
Calling people anti-vax and anti-mask when they clearly aren't is no different from bullying. By the way, there are plenty of scientists from top institutions like Stanford and even Nobel Prize winners who have spoken against many of the mainstream Covid narratives. Not sure how people like you with no medical domain expertise and experience have the gall to question valid concerns from respected doctors and scientists.
EDIT: Downvoted for pointing out smearing/bullying and dropping factual information. @dang - is this what HN is about? This has got to change.
Yeah, to be fair, that never happened. What did happen is him saying that if you're older you should stay home and if you're younger you should be alright with masks, which at the time was the same message that you'd hear in the media.
To be fair, you're just blatantly ignoring huge swaths of his anti-vax diatribes.
He recently pointed to a 5 year old paper to suggest that vaccinations are bad because they allow more virulent strains to come about.
He previously suggested that if you're "young" you don't need to be vaccinated, which of course his conspiratorial audience ate up and absolutely adored, ignoring any evidence or argument to the contrary.
> He recently pointed to a 5 year old paper to suggest that vaccinations are bad because they allow more virulent strains to come about.
Papers from the 1900s are still our best description of some physical phenomena. A paper's age, taken on its own, has nothing to do with truth or untruth.
All of us are right and wrong to varying degrees. I don't think Joe Rogan cares much for people that stop listening because he doesn't reinforce their politics. He never has.
He's also spoken about the whole point of him having FU money is that he is able to say whatever he wants and not care about the blowback.
I'm not anti-vax, but ultimately, my body, my choice. People who are risk averse are free to self-quarantine for any duration they please. Us, the unvaccinated, are happy to live freely and face any associated risks - just like people who decide to ride motorcycles, play combat sports, or eat homegrown food.
Because he's anti-vax. This is the future where everyone says they're not aligned with whatever idea then does everything they can to promote and propagate that idea. They'll even deny that the idea exists while spreading it as far as they can.
There are plenty of situations in which we as a society have decided that freedoms are curbed to protect the masses. Drunk driving laws for instance. If you are putting people around you at risk, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to require you to stay home, not all the other people who have taken the easy trivial precautions (vaccines and masks) necessary to protect those around them.
Covid vaccinations have only been proven to protect the vaccinated from severe outcomes. They don't prevent infection or re-transmission. There's no valid claim to pushing this on those that don't want them.
Of course I agree that those who do not want vaccines should not be forced. But they also should not get to ruin everything for the rest of us. The r coefficient for vaccinated people is drastically lower leading to protecting those that can not get vaccinated (whom, I guess, unvaccinated people do not mind screwing over). And vaccinated people are not taking away ICU beds from people suffering from non-prevetable diseases.
This is nonsense. The causal feature of the people saturating ICU capacities is that they are unvaccinated, not obese. It also matters that getting vaccinated is a cheap safe triviality, while getting into a healthy BMI range is an expensive long process (but I would agree that it should be encouraged).
It's the calories that count for obesity, not the "healthiness". It's perfectly possible to maintain a healthy body weight eating chips and drinking soda. Time isn't a factor here, personal responsibility is.
Yes, I am on the same page that all you need is a bit of discipline (and some baseline amount of crucial nutrients not present in cheap calory sources). But we all have about the same "discipline reserve", and some have harder life circumstances that expend that reserve on more urgent things than lunch. And this snowballs after it happens once. But to be fair, I do not really know what is the percentage of "well-off cushy fat people without a modicum of health discipline" vs "money-poor and time-poor stressed depressed fat people". I do suspect the latter group is bigger, and just yapping about "personal responsibility" kinda misses the point in that case.
You don't need to be money-poor to be time-poor and stressed. Just as with other vices, it's a matter of priorities - do you prioritize your near-term comfort or your long-term wellbeing? People can make either choice, but I expect them to take responsibility for the outcome.
They both reduce infections and reduce transmission.
The VE is reduced with delta, but its still nonzero (most of the studies of what it really is are still incredibly poor though, but nothing has show it to be below 50% VE against infection).
The initial comparable viral load studies are also all bad. All they did was compare Ct of RNA loads. We now know that there is less infectious virus in vaccinated individuals, and that Ct values themselves decline faster, which indicates they're producing more viral debris -- we expect studies of transmission to show that they transmit less. Older studies from earlier this year against Alpha found that 80% of vaccinated breakthrough infections produced zero transmitted secondary infections with the other 20% only infecting 1-3 other people.
That is sufficient enough impact on infection and transmission to end the pandemic if everyone was vaccinated.
Unfortunately, everyone, including many scientists are panicking in the face of uncertainty over the delta variant and assuming the absolute worst and spreading worst-case messages which are portraying vaccines as not being worthwhile, when they're still effective enough.
You are not wrong, you are just incredibly selfish. If it was not for selfish people, we would not have to worry about deciding things at the society-level.
> Us, the unvaccinated, are happy to live freely and face any associated risks - just like people who decide to ride motorcycles, play combat sports, or eat homegrown food.
I think you've got the wrong analogies going there. You, the unvaccinated, are principally putting yourselves at risk but you are also, and more importantly, putting others at increased risk of transmission from yourself.
Adjusting your content for accuracy: you, the unvaccinated, are not allowed by society to do anything you want. Just like you cannot drive drunk, shoot firearms inside city limits, urinate on the street, sell poop sandwiches as a food product, etc.
I know. We, the vaccinated, are also not free to do whatever we want. If the chance of transmission between vaccinated & unvaccinated ever equalizes, there would obviously be no reason for different treatment. But just because vaccinated people can transmit doesn't mean they are as likely to.
I don't know what you are referring to. Homegrown food? It can have parasites bro. If that's not what you're referring to, no need to play guessing games. Be specific.
I think that's OK, as long as you accept the consequence of being outcast from society - ie not allowed to interact or go into a public place where you are a threat. "Not making other people sick during a pandemic" is a pretty reasonable prerequisite for social interaction.
> Us, the unvaccinated, are happy to live freely and face any associated risks
So I assume you agree to not come running to the hospital when you get infected, taking away beds for other patients who shouldn't have to suffer because of your ignorance?
Uhh, no -- although your politics have driven you to salivate at the sight of an unvaccinated person in a deathbead so you can scream, "I told you so!", no -- I will happily go to the hospital if I need to. Why? Because "I'm willing to take the risk" does not mean that accepting death is a requirement (unfortunately for you).
Oh, and getting COVID and needing hospitalization absolutely does not mean that I will be taking away a bed from someone who needs it. You're so desperate to spew your hate that you actually made that strawman assumption; that's laughable. If you were actually honest, you would know that after the shortage of beds and ventilators, hospitals are now much, much better prepared to handle spikes in hospitalizations.
It appears the only ignorance here is yours, buddy.
He’s always been up and down that road. I don’t agree with Joe on a lot of things but I don’t know that is his goal. If there is one thing that I think Joe does reasonably well- its to have you consider your stance and reasons for feeling that way. I think it’s healthy to reflect on why you take stances on things like politics, culture and religion. Joe admits that he is “a cage fighting commentator” and while I think he self labels that way to sometimes get away with fringe viewpoints I do think he genuinely is looking for the best ideas. He’s definitely not infallible and he gets on my nerves to the point I stop listening for periods of time I do think that on balance his hearts in the right place and he is much less apt to blindly follow political doctrine a’la Fox News or CNBC.
You can pull it off if you've got integrity. John Stewart surely has plenty of integrity in my eyes. Joe's definitely also going for integrity, but maybe he's also liable to be pulled into the views of his guests. He certainly keeps an open mind, but if you surround yourself with a certain kind of people at some point you'll develop a bias no matter how open you're trying to be.
What's scarier are the persons who for the law are considered entertainment, but conduct themselves on Fox as if they're real journalists, and lie and deceive with impunity. If Joe Rogan could disrupt the right media with that, the same way John and maybe Stephen did on the left side, the world would be a better place for sure.
There is no real legal distinction between entertainers and journalists. The separation of news and editorial content is purely a matter of ethics and not law. Journalists don't have any special statutory privileges.
Nope. US courts have consistently held that the first amendment applies equally to everyone regardless of occupation. There is no special legal test to determine if someone is a member of the press. There are centuries of case law on this issue.
Journalists have (some) protection against being forced to testify about sources. I guess it becomes a philosophical question at that point whether being a journalist is an occupation or an action.
I actually think Rogan's approach is exactly the opposite of Stewart and Colbert (S&C). S&C would critique news organizations for failing to provide counterpoints. They would also earnestly advocate for their own views without feeling the need to provide counterpoints. Their justification was that they were entertainment - they believed what they were saying and didn't feel like they needed to properly inform on every element.
Rogan feels like he wants it both ways. He wants to pick the people for his show and get credit when he picks well, but if people dislike one of his picks he would suddenly like to be seen as 'mixing it up' or a "cage fight commentator." He won't really own a view (or the idea of wanting to expose people to particular thinkers), but he would rather bring people on in a way where he's seen as minimally responsible for the uncomfortable content he produces.
Joe holds and promotes many extreme beliefs but wants plausible deniability.
The format he uses lets him do this, empowering everything from Ivermectin promoters to white nationalists, while allowing him to feign that he’s not doing that
I suppose that is possible, but I dont really find him overly contrarian and a lot of his views are relatively centrist to slight libertarian. I will say I think he looks for folks that he jives with more than most qualified for the subject. But really Im not here to defend Joe and honestly have not found a lot of compelling guests of late on his show. I just dont think he is as bad as he is sometimes made out to be.
For a long time he thought the moon landing was fake. That's not a position you arrive at with reasoned science and understanding how the world works. He's stated he thinks Bigfoot could be real. He does the same thing on a myriad of other topics. He presents some random quack as just as valid as real science.
If he was just some random dude none of this would matter. But with 11 million followers, sometimes this "my youtube research is just as valid as your scientific research" attitude can do real harm, as it did with vaccines.
He's quite literally the "average Joe" (at least when he started). The reason he no longer thinks the moon landing is fake is because of reasoned science and understanding which he learned through the course of the show by talking to guests like Neil deGrasse Tyson.
If you invite me for dinner at your house and I spend 4 hours forcing you to convince me the Earth is round, even if I emerge with changed views, are we really going to be good friends after that?
That's up to you whether you can be friends with people who change your mind. I don't see why that's so hard but Rogan's changed opinion should be seen as a success story about learning.
Rogan changes his mind every time he talks to a guess with a different opinion. The opinion of someone who thinks the moon landing could be fake, or bigfoot could be real, should not be taken seriously by 11 million people when it comes to anything scientific. But sadly it is.
Rogan doesn't think either of those things, and really never the latter. It seems like you're basing all this on some outdated 2nd-hand source rather than actually listening to his podcast. And yes he's also fluid on views but stable on his values, like most people. That's how you can have hours of conversation instead of devolving into a heated debate, and maybe even share some knowledge by the end.
The more you claim to be the one to take seriously, the less serious anyone will want to take you. Especially if you do it in a negative fashion blocking others rather than putting out your own message. There's far more to influence, trust, and authenticity than claiming you're right or deducing everything to some rational puzzle, and perhaps that's the biggest lesson of all.
A fake moon landing would take a conspiracy of 1000s of people, all of whom have kept their mouths shut, even on their deathbeds. That's just one of many things which have had to happen that defy all common sense.
> his move to Spotify coincided with him spewing more and more anti-vax and anti-mask drivel that I don't have any interest in listening to
I listen to his show sometimes, and while I've heard him have guests on from all sides of these issues, at no point have I heard him be anything less than a thoughtful, critical interviewer.
If that's "drivel", we need more drivel. I'll certainly take it over everything I see on cable news, which is laser-focused on advancing a particular narrative, and demonizing anything and anyone who might deviate from that narrative.
Giving a platform to crackpots isn't always dangerous, but in the case of vaccines it's a public health concern. It's definitely not a good idea to give legitimacy to antivaxers during a pandemic when people dying. Save that conversation for another time.
I'm all for free speech in the sense that you have the right to say what you want without retribution from the government. Free speech doesn't mean you have the right to an audience.
Say I'm an interviewer running a podcast about SaaS startups. Which is more useful?
1. I interview a handful of people who have differing opinions on what it takes to lead a SaaS startup who have all had successful exist, but have differing opinions on key issues. Maybe throw in a few people who have experience working in that type of environment, but maybe not leading, if you want a little more variety.
2. I interview someone who has led a successful exit like in (1), but I also interview a full time commission visual artist who has never worked at a SaaS startup. I give both their ideas on how to run a SaaS startup equal weight, even when the visual artist isn't making any sense in the context of the conversation or is spewing nonsense in the context of the conversation.
Joe does (2). They are both "free speech", but only one is actually useful.
Please don't spread confusion about what "free speech" means. I'm sure you are not actually confused about this, so please do not pretend to be.
Having some people not appear on a given podcast is not a "free speech" issue. Choosing to not be a dangerous idiot by having dangerous idiots on your show during a pandemic is not "censorship" or anything remotely close to censorship as it is commonly, and correctly, understood.
> Please don't spread confusion about what "free speech" means.
I'm not confused.
> Choosing to not be a dangerous idiot by having dangerous idiots on your show during a pandemic is not "censorship" or anything remotely close to censorship as it is commonly, and correctly, understood.
When someone decides for me that "dangerous idiots" should not have a voice -- for whatever justification -- I'm against them having the ability to act on that impulse. The wonderful thing about free speech is that if you don't like it, you're free not to listen to it.
Every censor has started from the premise that they're doing good. I don't agree with your opinions, and I'm not so feeble-minded as to be unable to decide for myself what I see.
They weren't opinions. I stated facts about what "free speech" applies to, and what it doesn't. You pretending to not understand it does not change those facts. Neither does your repeating your contrary-to-fact, silly assertions, which have nothing to do with actual government restrictions on speech.
Let me just reiterate this, on the one-in-a-million chance that you actually don't get it: Joe Rogan can restrict the speech of whomever he fucking wants, for ANY reason, and that does NOT constitute any actual restraint on anyone's "free speech" rights.
I'm not… not anymore… after observing stuff like this. Like Joe, like some of his guests, like the results of how things have shaken out.
Notably, free speech absolutism is impossible to refute if everyone is arguing in good faith. Since quite a few influential political actors are demonstrably not, and are following well-defined tactics dating back to various fascist regimes such as those who produced WWII, it is insane to pretend everyone is arguing in good faith.
And it is both instructive and dismaying to see that the people most obviously arguing in bad faith have a tendency to insist, and get others to insist, that free speech must be absolute and that everyone must be taken with the assumption that they're arguing in good faith.
Tactically, it makes perfect sense, but it's a hell of an exploit.
There's a vast gulf between "Rogan should be more careful about bringing on and platforming people especially if he's going to support or validate what they say" and "Joe Rogan shouldn't be allowed to do his podcast."
Also the absolutist position ignores the limited capacity both in raw time and cognitively to take in information and that pushing people to do better about not spewing out or supporting bullshit is also free speech..
Equating any criticism of the strategies pushed by the medical establishment as "antivaxx" is just as counterproductive as calling everything "racist" or "transphobic" or "homophobic" or any of the other epithets being bandied around by the new puritans. Words have meanings, these meanings can change over time (language evolves) but forcing them to change to fit a given narrative leads to an unhealthy political and social climate. It is what Orwell wrote about in "1984", what Solzhenitsyn wrote about in "The First Circle", what Bradbury wrote about in "Fahrenheit 451", none of which were meant as user manuals for a healthy society.
I don't think accusations of spewing anti-vax and anti-mask drivel have anything to do with his interviewing skills. They're certainly not mutually exclusive. The parent commenter didn't make any accusations about his interviewing skills.
When you have extremists on and don't challenge what they're saying, that _is_ pushing a narrative.
The whole "both sides" thing is the _worst_ of cable news and why I signed off years ago. Does the Sun orbit the Earth? Let's get a crazy person on and see. It's okay because we'll give an expert a few minutes too.
OP doesn’t claim Rogan should be de-platofrmed. Just that pushing batshit theories is an explanation for his declining influence. I enjoy watching flat earthers from time to time. But I’m not going to make it a part of my information diet.
It's a plausible enough mistake to have happened before. Which to me, is good enough reason to not outright dismiss it as "obviously false".
Some Polio vaccines were contaminated with SV40 for years, and it does, in fact, alter human DNA.
For COVID-19, there have been at least 2 major cases of live virus vaccine contamination and recall. In the case of the Sputnik vaccine in Brazil and South Africa, there are claims that at least some made it into patients.
And then the "Baltimore Factory" testimony before Congress included company executives admitting to making ~100 million contaminated doses, more than the number of safe doses they had produced.
So this "don't mind him, he does conspiracies" attitude isn't doing anything except getting nods from those that don't need convincing, and proving to skeptics that you have a knowledge gap, whether it's ultimately relevant or true (or not).
I don't think it's currently happening happening here (at a minimum, adenovirus doesn't alter your DNA), but I also think it's just as reckless to imply that any concerns aren't legitimate or that it's impossible.
>antivax talking point (and for the most part a load of nonsense
>>polio vaccine administered from 1955–1963 was contaminated with simian virus 40 (SV40). The virus came from the monkey kidney cell cultures used to produce the vaccine. Most, but not all, of the contamination was in the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). Once the contamination was recognized, steps were taken to eliminate it from future vaccines. There have been many questions as to the effects on people who received the contaminated vaccine. SV40 has biological properties consistent with a cancer-causing virus, but researchers have not conclusively established whether or not it could cause cancer in humans. Studies of groups of people who received polio vaccine during 1955–1963 provide evidence of no increased cancer risk.
>>However, because these epidemiologic studies are sufficiently flawed, the Institute of Medicine's Immunization Safety Review Committee concluded that the evidence was inadequate to conclude whether or not the contaminated polio vaccine caused cancer. In light of the biological evidence supporting the theory that SV40-contamination of polio vaccines could contribute to human cancers, the committee recommends continued public health attention in the form of policy analysis, communication, and targeted biological research.
"Based on these limitations, the committee concludes that the evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between SV40-containing polio vaccines and cancer."
There is literally no reason to bring this up in relation to COVID vaccines. First, this was a contamination issue with polio vaccines between 1955 and 1961, long since fixed (and unlikely to happen again, as it is now much easier to detect this kind of contamination). Second, there has never been any good evidence that the 'contaminated' vaccines ever did anyone any harm.
>In light of the biological evidence supporting the theory that SV40-contamination of polio vaccines could contribute to human cancers, the committee recommends continued public health attention in the form of policy analysis, communication, and targeted biological research.
>long since fixed (and unlikely to happen again, as it is now much easier to detect this kind of contamination)
Multiple vaccines have already been recalled due to contamination, after they passed initial qaqc.
How does that make it unlikely that contaminated products don't go undetected?
My point isn't that vaccine's shouldn't be taken.
It's that the same people that constantly complain about pharmaceutical companies taking shortcuts and behaving unethically, suddenly decide the same companies are infallible when it comes to a rushed development of a product, from which they are fully shielded from liability.
>There is literally no reason to bring this up in relation to COVID vaccines
When someone suggests a concern is scifi conspiracy theory nonsense, and that concern has actually historically happened, then it's absolutely relevant.
The scare tactics are bad enough, but don't try to trick people with lies and outright manipulation, and there won't be anything to call out.
>In light of the biological evidence supporting the theory that SV40-contamination of polio vaccines could contribute to human cancers, the committee recommends continued public health attention in the form of policy analysis, communication, and targeted biological research.
Come on – this is just the standard ass-covering language in a scientific paper. "Further research is needed." By the nature of the case it's very hard to conclusively show that no-one has ever had a cancer caused by a 1960s Polio vaccine. But at present there is no good evidence that this has happened, as the paper that you linked to states very clearly.
Any medication can contain contaminants. I do not understand why you think that the mere abstract possibility that any given vaccine might contain contaminants is relevant to COVID vaccination efforts. This is like cautioning against people taking Aspirin because any given Aspirin pill might contain contaminants.
You posted a lot of evidence that SV40, a virus, causes cancer. You are using that to argue against a vaccine that targets a virus (the COVID-19 vaccine), because that vaccine might be contaminated with a virus? This is absolutely ridiculous. Viruses cause cancer, not vaccines.
> Some Polio vaccines were contaminated with SV40 for years
Right, and the Harvard Mark II had a moth that caused it to malfunction, therefore we can't trust the Apple M1.
This is the level of reasoning that anti-vaxers have sunk to. It's deliberate ignorance and sophistry.
Anti-vaxers aren't "asking questions". They aren't curious about actual reality. They are very confused people who want to maintain a simplistic (maybe naturalistic, who knows?) worldview and are increasingly twisted in knots and therefore filled with cognitive dissonance.
I personally don't like hunting down morons, but when they step on stage and refuse to yield, the should absolutely be mocked, shamed, and embarrassed, maybe even more so that they risk the health and safety of others with their idiocy. They didn't reason themselves into their positions, so I see no reason why we should try to reason them out.
Not in any normal way; the geocentricists tried to build mechanical models but the increasing number of epicycles was a big clue that the system was in fact heliocentric.
I well understand the history of this topic, after all, I have two years of Caltech physics :-) Nevertheless, as Einstein demonstrated, things look very different depending on the frame of reference.
There's no such thing as a "normal" frame of reference.
> the geocentricists tried to build mechanical models but the increasing number of epicycles was a big clue that the system was in fact heliocentric.
Not exactly, it was a big clue that the planets did not move in perfect circles. The mechanical models did not provide any evidence of heliocentrism. It was Galileo's observations of Venus that torpedoed the geocentric theory.
Is which object orbits which actually relative to a reference frame though? Does not seem like it should be.
The Sun has a certain mass, the Earth has a certain mass, the center of the point of orbit of both (barycenter? That seems to be the right term) is inside of the Sun no matter what frame you hang out in. What am I missing?
You can set up whatever frame of reference works best for a situation. We do it all the time. It's very convenient for us earthers to use a geocentric framing of the universe for our daily life, where the skies revolve around the Earth. We do it every day.
Such as the word "sunrise" is very geocentric. We don't even have a word for the heliocentric term for the same thing. We also use geocentric phrases like "jets chasing the Sun" and "sundials track the movement of the Sun", etc.
You can use whatever frame of reference you want, sure. Does there exist one in which the Sun orbits the Earth though? I don't think so. Those examples sound either metaphorical or about angular position/velocity, not orbit.
> Does there exist one in which the Sun orbits the Earth though?
Yes. It's what I've been talking about in this thread. You could always, of course, demand that the local TV station change the word "sunrise" to "when the Earth rotates until the Sun shines on the TV station", but I suspect that won't be successful.
I mean the principle of relativity (not the theory of relativity), i.e. the fact that the laws of physics are exactly the same in any (inertial) frame of reference and you cannot tell at which speed you're moving except relative to something.
A rotating reference frame is different. A local experiment can tell you whether you're rotating and how fast you're rotating.
NIST Technical Note 1385 "GPS Receivers and Relativity" by Ashby and Weiss discusses how to solve the GPS positioning equations in a relativistically correct way. It turns out that since the frame of reference (Earth-Centered/Earth-Fixed) is rotating, it is non-inertial and you have to apply some corrections to do the job right.
Galileo didn't really do a good job of proving the heliocentric view though. His advocacy of it was based more on aesthetics than observations. There was a great look at this in an article called "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown and Down 'n Dirty Mud-Wrassle" in the Jan/Feb 2013 issue of Analog. The author has an expanded version on his blog here [1].
For the naysayers: have you ever said "The Sun rises in the east?"?
I bet you have. From your frame of reference, the Sun revolves around the Earth.
I also bet if I asked you "which direction should be a rocket be launched into earth orbit to minimize fuel consumption" you'll have to stop and think about it.
He's had plenty of prominent leftist guests like Bernie Sanders, and most of his comedian and artist friends are left-leaning, and he leans left himself. How is this a gateway to the alt-right? At some point these accusations just become meaningless.
The claim isn't that he was a gateway to the alt-right _by having only a certain kind of guest_, or anything like that, so that's not really a counterargument.
Yeah, you can be so open-minded that every piece of drivel just slides easily through your mind. That isn't being well informed. You actually need good filters and know what they're based upon.
Props to Bernie for taking the battle to the middle ground though and not preaching only to the choir. He kind of got shit on for that as well.
Joe will be the first to say he isn't well informed at all and that's yet another reason why he likes having long conversations with all kinds of people. He's incredibly transparent and authentic, and that's what people seek more than anything. It's the reason for his rise along with many others building independent followings now.
Whether you like him or not, or agree with his views, is entirely subjective. But it's interesting to see how much control people want over others by the topics and conversation they want to prevent and suppress, and those actions speak far louder than words.
No, that's fine, it's probably true, but that's not a bad thing that we're condemning.
You are evidently very unwilling to accept the claim, so I don't think anything said here will convince you otherwise, but perhaps it is meaningful that so many people are convinced of it.
The point is that he exposes the entire spectrum and even leans left himself, however the original commenter only mentioned the alt-right. Clearly they're implying one side is worse and somehow going to unleash terrible things, however these claims are vague, misleading, and usually made by those who just happen to be on the other extreme.
Very few people have such trouble with his massive variety of guests, topics and politics; otherwise it wouldn't be the most popular podcast in the world.
It's pretty straight-forward. The left can't stand Rogan because he allows the non-left (not just the alt-right; the non-left) to have a platform. They don't actually care what the material is, what the issue is, they can't tolerate anything that isn't their own bubble, their own world views. The left controls ~95% of all media and it still isn't enough. Any platform that gives a voice to anything other than their own views, is fundamentally bad and is not to be tolerated. That's why most of the censorship push is coming from the left today, they're the party of intolerance and it's not just about the alt-right or far-right. Comedians broadly are terrified of the left's crazy censorship push, they're speaking out about it on a constant basis; comedians are almost always the canaries in the speech coal mine.
An obvious example of this in action, is Jordan Peterson, who the left almost universally detests. He's neither alt-right nor far-right, and yet the left tries to slander and control him with that label constantly (bury him under fake labels). If you're not in total agreement with them, you're the enemy; that's widely the ethos of the intolerant left today. Rogan has given people like Peterson a large platform to speak through. That's the sort of thing the left hates Rogan for.
Joe Rogan leans left in the same way someone that starts their sentences with “I’m not rasist, but …” aren’t racists. It’s just a rhetorical device to convince you that they don’t believe in labels, and then they immediately use their actions and words to demonstrate that they fit the textbook description of the label.
> They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.
It's the labels that are the problem, used by unreasonable people to create even more division. Most do not identify with a single side across all issues, or even all facets of a single issue.
It used to be the best when there was regulation that made sure equal amounts of attention were devoted to both sides of an issue with proper research.
What we have today are ideological echo chambers with some caricature of an opposing side, not actual debate.
That's a hell of a lot better than what we get now which is "we'll pick a single expert and nobody is allowed to question him because we know that his truth is the right truth."
No, he's become much more narrative/agenda/propaganda propagating and conspiracy theory fueling in recent years.
I used to listen when there were an interesting guest just to hear them talk at length about their profession/passions, but it's no longer worth it if the cost is giving rogan a podium for his self-proclaimed-moron-disclaimed pot-stirring efforts.
> I heard him be anything less than a thoughtful, critical interviewer.
He is the least critical interviewer you can imagine. Being uncritical and hyped up is his trademark. He is Mr. Softball to the extent he is made of fun for it.
He is not thoughtful. He has talent of speaking endlessly and keeping it going endlessly.
Sometimes the point of a talkshow is to get the guest to do the majority of the talking. Other talk shows take the opposite approach and the guest is just a vehicle to let the host pontificate. Neither is superior.
If anyone wants a datapoint, I stop listening to podcasts once they go to Spotify. I use Overcast, and generally don't have the wherewithal to chase content. I'm guessing there are more like me. I was an infrequent listener to Joe Rogan, but now I am not a listener at all (because it moved to Spotify).
Also, there seems to be a lot of judgement of the kind of person Joe Rogan is (conspiracy, etc) in the comments. I have never once listened to Joe Rogan to listen to Joe Rogan. The fact of the matter is he gets fantastic guests doing long form conversations. I only ever showed up for the guests. Generally also the case for many other podcasts, Lex Friedman, Tim Ferris, etc.... the value they bring is more the guests they attract and the space they create for the guest.
I guess it would be interesting to deep fake the voice of the host and see how many people actually cared about the host.
I'm the same way. I used to listen to Stern on the radio for my morning drive but never considered for a second going satellite when he did. There were plenty of options.
I was also an idle subscriber: I'd start listening to perhaps one in five episodes, with guests who interest me (think of people like Elon Musk or Jonathan Haidt). When Rogan left Apple podcasts/Stitcher, I stopped listening. Your statement echoes how I feel: "I only ever showed up for the guests. Generally also the case for many other podcasts, Lex Friedman, Tim Ferris, etc.... the value they bring is more the guests they attract and the space they create for the guest."
You basically explained my view and feelings on the matter. I watched maybe 10 episodes per year on YT but once it went to Spotify, I don't watch at all.
Coincidentally, around the same time he went to Spotify, I started getting really annoyed at his butting in and his opinions on matters that his guests know a lot more about. I've caught a clip or two on YT in recent months and I skip over any parts where the camera is on Joe, so I can just hear the guest.
> I guess it would be interesting to deep fake the voice of the host and see how many people actually cared about the host.
I wonder how good GPT would be at generating questions to a guest based on their work and interests. Having a GPT driven interviewer could be quite interesting as a gimmick.
I like his choice of guests (high percentage of scientists and interesting people, even if some of them are conspiracy theorists) and that he mostly lets people talk. But I lost a lot of respect for him after his recent MMA commentary. I've never seen such biased commentary in any sport as his in Adesanya vs Blachowicz. It was absurd.
I think he's generally a good interviewer, and I like that he invites people from all sides of the spectrum, if anything, it helps me challenging my own ideas. Also, as a non-american, I feel this is entertaining and give me a glimpse of American culture.
That being said, I've lost interested mostly because his guests have been less interesting (lately, mostly his comedian/fighter friends).
BTW, anyone has good podcasts in the same vein to recommend?
It's hard to listen to recently, he's suggesting working out and eating vitamins instead of a vaccine. He still has an influence on people and he's spreading misinformation.
Rogan is against wearing masks but demands all of his guests to be tested for COVID-19 before going on his show which is kind of contradictory.
Yeah, that's about exactly when I stopped listening to him. Listening to him talk shop with other comedians was always entertaining. But "serious" Joe is a whackjob, yes-man, and meat-head.
I have a Spotify subscription. I used to watch Joe on YouTube. I haven't since he moved. I use Spotify at work to have something to drown out the noise around me. I watch YouTube to relax. My habits mean I don't even think of going to Spotify for a podcast.
The more he embraces conspiracy theories, the less I find him persuasive. At this point, with his embrace of anti-vaccination ideas and being completely mostly to medical science and the scientific community out of contrarianism, I find him more annoying than interesting.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 310 ms ] threadWhat? AM stations tend to have larger ranges (FM is limited by line-of-sight). There tends to be more talk on AM because the audio quality is lower (and more susceptible to interference); I would assume that talk radio (where opinions are actually being discussed) would naturally have more "extreme" content than music, where the opinions are diluted by the presence of other content.
If he’s trying to deliver specific messages now, that would certainly affect who wants to listen to him.
I used to listen to him when he interviewed someone I was interested in. I even installed Spotify so I can access his podcast.
In practice, because I don’t use Spotify for anything else, I have simply forgotten about him.
If the deal lasts for more than 2 years, then he has made a serious error.
Did he personally tell you that entering 2025 with a net worth of $175 rather than $195 million would present a serious problem for him? Does he not care more about other things in life?
> Spotify doesn’t play or include ads that interrupt the listening experience of Premium subscribers. However, some podcast creators may include third-party advertising, host-read endorsements, or sponsorship messages in their episodes.
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Other-Podcasts-Partners-etc...
Annoying to both pay for spotify and get hammered with ads. Granted I pay for the music, but it's still annoying as all.
Since I still have to listen to ads, i'm thinking of just dropping the subscription and hoping there becomes a method to break this Widevine trash. I encounter a bug with their app on a daily basis and I am tired of it. From what I gather, there are different levels of Widevine encryption that limit video quality but the lower levels are crackable. I hope someone smarter than me tries the crack on the JRE podcast.
On Spotify not only he got some cash upfront, but also significantly mitigated this risk, since platform is way more aligned (i.e. it's important business for Spotify and a footnote for YouTube).
He cashed in before his expiration date. Brilliant move.
He also can talk to people he disagrees with without going into petty word fights. Despite his image he has a lot of humility, he knows and openly admits not to be the smartest man in the room. And to me comes across as a person eager to learn and hear new ideas.
I have learnt quite a lot about being good conversationalist by studying what and how he deals with guests.
He has casual (friends) episodes that are pretty repetitive but he also invites experts from all over. Those episodes are very entertaining.
(I dont use spotify so havent been following his podcast since the move)
Could being the operative word. We're talking about "blow a million dollars on random shit every year until you die and still have multiple millions left over" amounts of money. Why would anyone who doesn't already have hundreds of millions of dollars opt for that? The whole point of this tangent in the discussion is that he probably realized his time in the spotlight was limited, so any plan that assumes longevity is statistically unlikely to come to fruition.
Spotify also sends video even though I just need the audio. It's a waste of valuable bandwidth and CPU.
If there would an alternative I would take it.
Anyway I have definitely listened JRE way less lately...
I have Spotify and don't listen to podcasts much at all. When I have, it hasn't been on Spotify and I've always been able to skip through the recording to get past the ad (either with a "skip fwd 15 secs" button or by grabbing the slider and moving it manually). Does Spotify not offer that capability?
But Apple podcasts “skip 15sec” is still easier, I can do it without looking while driving.
The first time this happened to me (while loading up a Joe Rogan podcast), I legitimately thought Spotify was glitching out. There's no visual indication in the app that it's a temporary ad, or of how many ads you have to listen to before the episode starts. I made it to the beginning of the third ad track before giving up.
There is also a bug I experience pretty regularly where the podcast will restart when I resume it so I lose my spot.
Such a buggy piece of crap app.
I still see clips of him on YouTube. How does that work given his deal with Spotify, anyone know?
It looks like crypto currencies : built by geeks wanting to build a better system, and mostly used by ill intended people. What don't we see the same thing for social networking ? Because at the end all they care about is money so they need to control everything and build their copy of Twitter or Facebook ?
Correct, and that was the point of my post. Rogan had the platform to freely distribute his thoughts, but in exchange for money, he chose to give up control of their distribution.
https://investor.siriusxm.com/investor-overview/press-releas...
Sirius XM (nasdaq:SIRI) and Spotify (nyse:SPOT) are two different companies.
Sirius XM bought pandora in 2019.
In what way was Stern's audience narrower at all than Rogan's? Stern narrowed his audience when he moved to Sirius, but so did Rogan, apparently. When Stern was in syndication and on E!, he had as general an audience as any radio personality (back when people listened to the radio.) Rogan has a very narrow demographic as far as I can see, and virtually that entire demo is a subset of who listened to or watched Stern during what was something like a 15 year long peak.
really? I was under the impression that Rogan skewed much younger. (at least compared to the Stern audience when he made his platform jump.) and sure Stern narrowed his audience when he moved to satellite, but wasn't he already a bit past his prime at that point?
This article produced data to back up their assertion, I would be curious to see the data you're looking at that helps you make yours.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28302725
There was a marketing study of influencers from Rakuten Marketing that indicates that advertising through influencer channels produces positive sales results. But again, it's not clear that the influencer actually drove the purchases, versus just drawing an audience that was predisposed to make those purchases in the first place.
https://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Rakuten-2019-...
The best part of youtube is that one could search through and get excerpts of the video. I could easily find JRs tidbits without the need of going through the entire interview. I still see some of the older excerpts in youtube, but less so in spotify.
> “There were a few episodes they didn’t want on their platform,” Rogan said, per DMN. “And I was like, ‘OK, I don’t care.'” https://www.thewrap.com/spotify-deletes-joe-rogan-podcast-ep...
I guess some do but I don't think I ever listen to past podcasts that I've already listened to...
Beyond bad faith concern trolling, I suspect not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdVso9FSkmE
In other words, lying by omission is still lying.
Edit to add- just to show how unbelievably petty the reasoning can be- Tyler Perry threw a bitch-fit about an episode of Boondocks and had it pulled (as was an episode ripping on BET when they screamed). For something that was pure satire and a cartoon they not only had it pulled from airing, they now no longer list the episodes at all on Hulu/HBOMax, pretending they never existed at all, even re-numbering the episodes.
All because of Tyler Perry/Some BET exec's ego? GTFO.
We have Holocaust deniers while still having people alive that survived it. We have people constantly denying proven, recent history and some people think it's ok to censor shit and pretend it never happened and it'll be all roses and sunshine.
They should at least have a disclaimer about the missing episodes.
This isn't some new idea here.
> A memory hole is any mechanism for the deliberate alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression that something never happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-rogan-experience-podcast...
Alex Jones testified to being a performance artist and hosts a talk show purely to hawk merchandise. Does that really fit the mold of a thought-provoking podcast like Rogan's?
This is a line I've read from texts dating back to at least 1973 by conservative authors, nearly verbatim.
I think cultural mores change and conservatives have a hard time adapting.
Alternatively, they've simply been dishonest with themselves since just after WWII -- start with the nonsense about FDR allowing Pearl Harbor to happen -- because they believe the ends justify the means.
I think Milo is a scumbag, personally, but where did he self-proclaim that he's a white supremacist?
>Alex Jones testified to being a performance artist
No, he didn't. His lawyer attempted to argue that he was during a lawsuit, as a defense against full culpability for his actions. Lawyers (understandably) try to pull out everything they can to help their client. There's no evidence Jones himself has ever said this or thinks this.
Although most of his non-watchers seem to think he's just a con artist, after watching a cumulative dozens of hours of him on camera over the years, I'm convinced it's not an act and that he genuinely believes pretty much everything he's saying (except for cases where he's attempting to do a comedy bit). Unfortunately, a lot of people in the US believe all of the things he believes - and not necessarily because they're hearing it from him. They all drink from the same watering holes. In my opinion, this is why it's actually a lot more frightening than con artistry or performance art.
(I don't consider it material that presumably Spotify required deleting them as part of the deal. Rogan agreed to those terms, so clearly the money was more important to him.)
'So and so is bad, I heard it from X' has never been good for any human society.
Pretending the episodes don't exist is rewriting history.
'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'
Personal point- if I saw Alex Jones personally I would not want to be him. He has, for his own enrichment, destroyed personal relationships, caused me endless arguments with friends/family and is a walking detrament to society. I hate with a passion the garbage he spews to sell some garbage fake pills. But I still believe he has a right to be heard.
We need to educate people not shelter them.
What do you expect to happen when the balance of power, majority opinion, etc inevitably shifts and we find ourselves on the other side?
If you want to play the pedant fine, he has a right to speak.
But if people like you would stop judging who gets to speak and where we wouldn't have to depend on Joe Rogan's megaphone, now would we?
Also how do you know that either of those people are what others have told you they are? If you're unable to listen to them because they've been depersoned everywhere, you have no way of knowing if they're truly as represented or have been character assassinated. I'm not trying to convince you that either of them aren't who you think they are (from what I've seen, you're not far off) but rather have you see that you could be wrong about them (or others in the future) if you are not allowed to hear them first hand and only get views of them filtered through others.
Maybe this is a 1990s George Carlin thing to say, but so what if Milo offends people? Should we only be allowed to hear things that don’t offend us?
Absolutely not! That said, I also believe in intolerance of intolerance but don't have any good answers on how that is best played out.
I also like being able to justify intolerance towards anyone I want by labeling them "intolerant". Same as only caring about those I want to care about and only supporting free speech that I agree with. Makes everything much easier.
I'd be happy to debate this further if you were willing to do so in good faith rather than intentionally twisting my words. Otherwise, you can label me as "anti-free speech" and call it a day having won the war for freedom on the internet.
Pretty sure he said that while married to a black dude, so unless you can come up with something specific I think its comedy/trolling.
Because there’s so little cross pollination today everyone lives in a bubble. If your Facebook is full of right-wing stuff, you only watch Fox News and only listen to Larry Elder, you’ve got an echo chamber, breeding ground for radicalization.
Having a wide variety of guests actually fights that. You listen to Bernie Sanders, then Alex Jones, then Ben Shapiro, then Edward Snowden. Rogan breaks the echo chamber. People who might only listen to Alex Jones have a chance at listening to Bernie.
Everything is publicity. It's not achieving some important social need, its driving people towards new products. Interviewing Alex Jones isn't doing anything except making more people know what an Alex Jones is.
Is that why the kardashians are so famous, because their continued media presence is our opportunity to see if they make sense? No, they are just crap and giving them more sunlight just gives them more undue fame, money, and power.
I think the truth is the opposite: there are no dangerous ideas. "Sandy Hook was fake!" is stupid and wrong, but the way to defeat it is exposure, not erasure. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
It's very easy to pick up new conspiracies for a conspiracy-minded person. It's very hard to drop them.
Some people hearing a crazy idea might adopt it. Some might criticize it. Some might learn how crazy ideas work. Some might adopt it for a little while, then reject it, and be wiser through the experience. Someone who goes on a crusade to fix this one falsehood might be exposed to it. You cannot know what all effects the sum of a discussion has.
But I can certainly tell you this: censorship doesn't work. It didn't work in ancient Rome. It didn't work in the Holy Roman Empire. It didn't work in Soviet Russia. It doesn't work in Communist China. It's not working right now for vaccine disinformation. Driving crazy ideas underground does not make them disappear, and it does not make them unpopular -- it makes them spread without criticism. And in fact, telling people they can't do something generally makes them want to do it. It appears to work for a little while, but I cannot think of a single historical case in which this actually worked out. Somehow the banned ideas always seem to survive beyond the death of the regime that banned them.
We will always have crazy ideas. We will always have crazy people that buy them. Depriving them of respectability is perhaps a little helpful, but opens up a different danger: just who gets to decide what and who is crazy? I didn't vote for you, and I didn't vote for Spotify either.
You can't, and you never will. Culture evolves slowly, and humans even slower.
There is ample evidence since at least World War I, that both 'positive' PSA type information and 'negative' propaganda/counter information/psy ops absolutely have an effect.
Reminder that the Wakefield fraud in 1998, on M.M.R. vaccines and autism, started a negative sentiment towards vaccination and is directly attributed to the measles outbreaks (and deaths) across the developed world (Amplified by Oprah's platform). [1]
Reminder that still today many people will claim carrots give you better vision (they are indeed healthy). This was a counter-info operation from the British, claiming they were providing Air Control with carrots, in order to hide the existing of newly invented RADAR technology against German Bombers. [2]
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/
[2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propagand...
(Agreed btw that most humans are easy to manipulate. How interesting about the carrots, I like to eat, for the eyes partly)
Public Service Announcement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_service_announcement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
I don't think you can win that battle. The 'Proctor & Gamble are satan worshipers' meme spread across the country before the internet existed. You can't stop people from spreading nonsense, but engaging with and ridiculing nonsense at least makes sure the counter-memes exist, when someone is ready to hear them.
You can do both. There is evidence that deplatforming works. It isn't perfectly effective, but not giving cranks access to the biggest megaphones and most virulent information-spreading engines in human history does in fact seem to inhibit their ability to spread. Doing so doesn't stop anyone from engaging with or ridiculing them.
But, point of order, we've been "engaging and ridiculing" for years now, it hasn't worked yet. Everyone says sunlight is the best disinfectant, but as far as I can see, this particular strain of infection feeds on sunlight.
'Works' in what sense? Does it make the sort of people who believe this stuff less credulous? Or does it just make them less likely to listen to the specific blowhard being deplatformed, and less likely to believe the specific conspiracy theory being peddled? It's not like there's a shortage; both conspiracy theories and con-men are fungible.
(And it goes without saying, that any deplatforming/censorship argument sounds strongest against something patently ridiculous like Sandy Hook not having happened, weaker against something controversial, and positively diabolical against something you personally believe to be true. If you assume the person in charge of the deplatforming is someone you politically disagree with, are you still as big a fan?)
It works in the sense that it deprives people of the power-multiplying capabilities of large platforms to spread disinformation. It doesn't stop the spread, but it does slow the spread. Yes, Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists would still exist without Alex Jones egging them on, but there would have been fewer of them, and they might not have been so invested in the meme that they decided to harass victims of the shooting.
>And it goes without saying, that any deplatforming/censorship argument sounds strongest against something patently ridiculous like Sandy Hook not having happened, weaker against something controversial, and positively diabolical against something you personally believe to be true.
Yes, that's why I'm making it against the first group, and not the second or third. I'm saying if you're spreading patently ridiculous nonsense like "Sandy Hook was a hoax," and that ridiculous nonsense is doing actual societal harm, it's perfectly legitimate for platforms to decide that you should take your big breadboard and tinfoil hat elsewhere.
>If you assume the person in charge of the deplatforming is someone you politically disagree with, are you still as big a fan?
I'm not supporting deplatforming in the case of simple political disagreement, so in that case, no.
What you're dancing around, though, is that you can't talk about why this particular piece of bullshit sticks if you're pretending it's apolitical. The Sandy Hook hoax idea, as I understand it, is the theory that there are forces within the US government plotting to restrict gun rights, and they staged a fake school shooting to gain support. Right?
Well, you can pin the second bit on Alex Jones, at least partly, but the other part, the "there are forces within the US government plotting to restrict gun rights" part, that's a meme that the mainstream right has been pushing relentlessly for something like two generations. And it is not a conspiracy theory; it's literally true (albeit often exaggerated).
So my point, the reason I think deplatforming Jones would be ineffectual, is that the damage is already done. A generation has been convinced that the anti-gun brigade is so powerful and pernicious that faking a school shooting is something they might realistically do. That is the problem. I don't know if that problem is solveable, but I don't think deplatforming people like Alex Jones really affects it.
The most livable societies I know are all open societies. Once you start censoring this you might also want to censor that and the misinformation here, and this doesn't sound right either... Maybe your own comment is misinformation. Maybe saying we need more restrictions on speech is a dangerous idea. Should I lobby for your speech to be deplatformed, as you call it?
If by "open" societies you mean societies in which no form of "censorship" is practiced by any entity, at any level, then no, you do not, because such societies do not exist. Even the United States has limits placed on speech at the Federal level (the level limited by the First Amendment) and elsewhere. Even public squares are regulated. And on top of everything else, society itself imposes "censorship" through cultural and social norms.
Certainly speech on private property can be regulated. You can't go into a restaurant and start campaigning or venting about the government. Platforms on the web, which are also private property, have always been likewise regulated by their owners. I guarantee this is the case in whatever livable societies you're referring to.
>Once you start censoring this you might also want to censor that and the misinformation here, and this doesn't sound right either... Maybe your own comment is misinformation.
Yes, the slippery slope argument, all forms of censorship must inevitably lead to arbitrary censorship something something Orwell something Stalinist purges. At this point it's been invoked so often that it's become something of a thought-terminating cliche. All I can say is I don't believe that the ability of site owners and moderators to police and control content - an ability they've had forever mind you - will somehow inevitably lead to the boot stomping on our heads forever. If you disagree we'll have to agree to disagree.
After all, as stated earlier, there are no societies in which no form of censorship occurs. If the slippery slope argument were valid, all societies would currently be dictatorships. That societies exist which you consider "open" suggests that
>Should I lobby for your speech to be deplatformed, as you call it?
Lobby whom? We're talking about the policies of specific private entities, you're the one who predictably brought up CCP style authoritarianism despite no one actually arguing for governments to "deplatform" anyone from society. But sure - if you think my speech is doing real world harm in the same way as Alex Jones or anti-vaxxers, feel free to "lobby" the mods about it. That would, after all, be your free speech right would it not?
>feel free to "lobby" the mods about it.
Sure, we both know they won't remove you. If I were an elite and actually had the power to have your voice removed from all popular platforms, as well as access to Visa transactions and banking etc. like it happened to Jones, you'd still support it, right?
It's of course known these Silicon Valley corporations aren't really multi-billion dollar businesses, but collectivized people who have personhood and free speech rights. By creating oligopolies and controlling what information we view, they only exercise their rights as citizens the world.
Hasn't everything about the past ~5 years proven this to be completely fake?
This quip implies two things.
1. Is that all publicity is equivalent. Rogan is no James Randi. He's much more likely to nod along with anything a guest says than debunk it. His podcast is entertainment, not a crucible for the truth.
2. Is that every time we broadcast nonsense that fewer people believe it and society as a whole becomes wiser. If this were true, then when the ex-President talked about drinking bleach you'd expect bleach ingestion calls to 911 to decrease. In reality they increased at least on a short timescale. On a long enough timescale, maybe the anti vaccination population will fall below the level it was when Dr. Wakefield published his infamous anti vaccination paper. Given the last few decades of suffering, I'd guess there are better ways to educate the public.
1. You seem to think that Joe Rogan is not very reliable or trustworthy. How do you know that? Because of past interviews where he nodded along with a crackpot, right? Isn't that valuable information? Doesn't that help you evaluate new information you get from him?
2. The choice we are faced with is not, "Should we allow nonsense to be broadcasted"; it is "What should we do in response to it." In each of these cases, I think it's pretty important to be aware of what happened.
If you could time travel back to, say, 2000, and you had a choice of either trying to "bury" Wakefield's work to keep people from hearing about it or to promote the idea that his work was bunk, which would you choose? I think the latter would be more effective, wouldn't it?
This sort of hyperventilating moralistic fear of certain people makes me laugh, in its similarity to Victorian or conservative Christian communities. You cannot possibly want anything to do with that vagabond! I don't know, he has some vices, but he also has some perspective I am enriched by hearing. You don't have to fear sinners. Don't imitate them, but your life will be richer if you're less of a prude.
Milo is a gadfly. He offends me sometimes, too. And sometimes he has stinging observations I don't hear anywhere else. I don't want to listen to him every day, but I would be poorer for having never made the acquaintance. Alex Jones is energetic and occasionally unhinged, and when he says something completely insane that also happens to be true, I find it a comedy experience like no other. But he can also be a wakeup call to some of the naive views I hold. I don't want to listen to him every day, either, but I would again be poorer if I never had.
But at the end of the day, I really resent gatekeepers who want to make these sorts of decisions for me. I read history -- which means I read lots of things lots of very evil people have written. I would actually rather have the opportunity to read and study Hitler's words than have them banned on the assumption that they are too dangerous for me. I would like to think I am wise enough to judge evil for what it is, and I would like to be able to prove that to myself against real villians of history. The versions I was given in elementary school hardly illustrate the dangers. Goodness knows I can't avoid encountering dangerous ideas in the real world anyway, so what is the point of trying to protect me? I would rather be strong than safe.
People are not children. They can handle reading history's dangerous ideas, and they can handle hearing society's dangerous ideas. It is better to encounter those ideas on Joe Rogan with thoughtful and open questioning and discussion, than to encounter them quiet and unopposed in private. Strong people are better than safe ones. Victorian moralizing and shunning didn't really work out for them either.
Spotify is well within their rights to pick and choose who to platform. I, personally, think de-platforming is counterproductive. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones may be trash human beings, but I don't think Spotify having Rogan's interview with him -- which by the way is a lot of Jones looking insane, and Joe challenging him every step of the way -- is in any way equivalent to "Spotify supports Alex Jones." Censoring people just pushes them to echo chambers.
If you aren't offended by Alex Jones you got deeper issues, or perhaps are just ignorant to his white nationalist messaging.
Who talks like this??
The irony is that by moving to these liberal employees' platform, he's losing influence :)
By creating a crappy podcast platform they've ensured they get what they want and he ends up diminished.
Unless Spotify publicly disclosed which employees said something along with their political beliefs, I think the best we can do here is describe them as Spotify employees.
Arguably there are reasons to dislike Joe's podcast for people all over the political spectrum.
Also, it's Silicon Valley, liberals outnumber conservatives 10 to 1 so he's probably spot on with how he described them.
The Economist has daily 45 minutes, Conan O'Brien is on audio only etc..
And he might actually have a broader audience than before, does it matter that much that guests 'new follower' metrics are down?
I think there's a broader context to consider here.
A quick google search seems to contradict this. Can you point me towards a source that backs these claims?
I won't get an account with a company just to hear what you have to say. If you require that, as far as I'm concerned your influence just waned a little. I'm steadfast and unflinching in this, it is a firm rule I have.
I lost interest too.
"People say, do you think it's safe to get vaccinated? I've said, yeah, I think for the most part it's safe to get vaccinated. I do. I do," Rogan said on the podcast. "But if you're like 21 years old, and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I'll go no. Are you healthy? Are you a healthy person?"
"If you're a healthy person, and you're exercising all the time, and you're young, and you're eating well," Rogan continued, "like, I don't think you need to worry about this."
If this is what you are referring to, is that really anti-vax?
Yes that's anti-vax. We get vaccinated not just to protect ourselves from death, but also to protect those around us by reducing the transmission of disease.
> Vaccination only protects you
False. Vaccinated people can still get sick, and vaccination reduces the spread of disease, protecting people that aren't you.
http://cdc.org/
Based on evidence from clinical trials in people 16 years and older, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 95% effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed infection with the virus that causes COVID-19 in people who received two doses and had no evidence of being previously infected.
Based on evidence from clinical trials, in people aged 18 years and older, the Moderna vaccine was 94.1% effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection in people who received two doses and had no evidence of being previously infected.
The J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine was 66.3% effective in clinical trials (efficacy) at preventing laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection in people who received the vaccine and had no evidence of being previously infected. People had the most protection 2 weeks after getting vaccinated.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different...
The calculus with delta is different, as it does seem that vaccinated people can spread delta. But the severity of that spread, as well as the amount of time a vaccinated person can spread it, is certainly lower than that of an unvaccinated person.
These takes encourage people to only think about themselves. Even if a young, generally healthy (unvaccinated) person is unlikely to get sick (or worse), they could still very easily end up an asymptomatic carrier, and give it to someone who isn't in such great shape. Beyond that, an unvaccinated host is also a great place for the virus to mutate and spread, prolonging the pandemic for everyone.
Everyone who is eligible and medically able needs to get vaccinated. I'm getting super tired of all this garbage; the US has had the vaccine supply and capability to be out of the pandemic by now, but the unvaccinated are screwing over the rest of us who are doing the right thing.
I'm curious as to what evidence you base that assertion on. Respectfully, can you explain your position there?
While I generally agree with you, this is an opinion, not an unquestionable fact. Especially as we're seeing elevated risk of myocarditis in young men, there's absolutely a legitimate debate here.
I don't necessarily think Rogan is the one advancing that debate, but presenting opinions as facts is not helping anyone.
That's a rather polarized position... what facts or experienced led you to this conclusion you stated? Specifically "the unvaccinated are screwing over the rest of us who are doing the right thing".
The fact that the unvaccinated are taking up all of the hospital beds in certain areas of the country..?
They're disproportionately taking up resources in hospitals for example, which do not have unlimited resources. We could be having a much better response right now [here in the U.S.] with less load on hospitals, but we're not, because of selfish and/or gullible people.
They're also making the pandemic & related economic measures last longer than necessary. I can't wait for the next shutdown(s) as more variants evolve then spread and hospitals become even more inundated. Meanwhile I look at places like South Korea which have had life continue relatively normal because people actually wear masks there instead of politicizing them.
Unvaccinated/maskless people [by choice] who then get sick with COVID and go to the hospital anyways are unnecessarily draining hospitals of their limited resources. Hospitals were already understaffed before COVID, and now unvaccinated/maskless people want the workers at hospitals to risk their lives and work around the clock to benefit people who basically flipped them (and science) off until they got sick and changed their tune. It's so hypocritical.
The highly infectious aspect of the disease makes it different from e.g. poor lifestyle habits or one off decisions. Every single COVID patient is taking up a bed/resources that could have gone to people who are unhealthy for reasons outside of their control, and there are hospitals completely at capacity due to COVID.
And not making a choice to be pro or anti-vax is a choice in itself. Choosing to not have an opinion means implicitly supporting the status quo, which where I am would mean implicitly supporting a bunch of unvaccinated, maskless people by choice draining our resources and having a flagrant disregard for their fellow citizens. That statement makes about as much sense as saying "I'm not pro or anti -science-".
There needs to be a very good reason(s) why one would be "neutral" about vaccines or science. Internet conspiracies don't count as good reasons, and the other side has has actual research and facts backing it up. Saying that one is just "neutral" about science or vaccines is semantically exactly the same as saying that one is anti-science or vaccines.
It most certainly does not, at least to a rational person. That's very cultish thinking.
Part 2: > I still think this is a very disappointing, dangerously misinformed take on his part
lol. "I don't know what he said, but I disagree with it"
The main purpose of getting the vaccine isn't just to protect yourself -- it's to reduce the chances of you transmitting it to others. It's about herd immunity, not personal immunity. Whether you're young and healthy is irrelevant.
You can make the argument that getting vaccinated reduces the risk of you being hospitalized, which keeps a bed and a nurse available for someone else. Thats a much more valid argument to make.
[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00728-2
Edit: for those downvoting me, I’ve added a reference for more information
This is my understanding as well, which was why I decided to get vaccinated. If avoiding infection is impossible in the long run, I should help my immune system prepare for it.
I wonder how differently things would be going if the campaign was "Covid is here to stay. You will get it. Get vaccinated."
Maybe it would help, maybe not.
I actually heard someone say that today, but I don't remember where. Maybe Breaking Points, but not sure.
I was certainly rattled when I saw amateur video of hospital workers stacking bodies in a freezer truck in NYC. They should do more like that. As morbid as it is, it gets the point across.
https://nypost.com/2020/03/30/disturbing-footage-shows-dead-...
This wasn't the one I saw but you get the idea.
Not about personal immunity? Why did we roll it out by age group then?
It wasn't about saving the most lives per se. It was about reducing the load on the medical system. I suspect those outcomes are strongly correlated.
How can you think it was about anything but saving lives? The cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics in this thread is incredible. The vaccine offers personal immunity thats why we gave it to the most at risk groups first.
> Ooooh boy I can't wait to get my Fellas (YC 2021) pills so I can lose all this fat off of my back. Teehee.
> Don't forget, we should also all eat soy/tofu and ban guns. :) Guns are scary.
> I'm a fat faggot. :)
Australia is basically a prison now. Turn on "Show Dead" if you want to see the good comments.
Doctor shows how the “COVID-19 vaccine” damages vital organs in the body – see the shocking evidence
https://endtimes.video/doctor-covid19-vaccine-dangers/
EDIT: Downvoted for pointing out smearing/bullying and dropping factual information. @dang - is this what HN is about? This has got to change.
He recently pointed to a 5 year old paper to suggest that vaccinations are bad because they allow more virulent strains to come about.
He previously suggested that if you're "young" you don't need to be vaccinated, which of course his conspiratorial audience ate up and absolutely adored, ignoring any evidence or argument to the contrary.
Papers from the 1900s are still our best description of some physical phenomena. A paper's age, taken on its own, has nothing to do with truth or untruth.
He's also spoken about the whole point of him having FU money is that he is able to say whatever he wants and not care about the blowback.
I'm not anti-vax, but ultimately, my body, my choice. People who are risk averse are free to self-quarantine for any duration they please. Us, the unvaccinated, are happy to live freely and face any associated risks - just like people who decide to ride motorcycles, play combat sports, or eat homegrown food.
And do not be silly: healthy food is way more expensive per calory.
The VE is reduced with delta, but its still nonzero (most of the studies of what it really is are still incredibly poor though, but nothing has show it to be below 50% VE against infection).
The initial comparable viral load studies are also all bad. All they did was compare Ct of RNA loads. We now know that there is less infectious virus in vaccinated individuals, and that Ct values themselves decline faster, which indicates they're producing more viral debris -- we expect studies of transmission to show that they transmit less. Older studies from earlier this year against Alpha found that 80% of vaccinated breakthrough infections produced zero transmitted secondary infections with the other 20% only infecting 1-3 other people.
That is sufficient enough impact on infection and transmission to end the pandemic if everyone was vaccinated.
Unfortunately, everyone, including many scientists are panicking in the face of uncertainty over the delta variant and assuming the absolute worst and spreading worst-case messages which are portraying vaccines as not being worthwhile, when they're still effective enough.
It is scary what some societies throughout history have defined as "perfectly reasonable".
I think you've got the wrong analogies going there. You, the unvaccinated, are principally putting yourselves at risk but you are also, and more importantly, putting others at increased risk of transmission from yourself.
Adjusting your content for accuracy: you, the unvaccinated, are not allowed by society to do anything you want. Just like you cannot drive drunk, shoot firearms inside city limits, urinate on the street, sell poop sandwiches as a food product, etc.
I know. We, the vaccinated, are also not free to do whatever we want. If the chance of transmission between vaccinated & unvaccinated ever equalizes, there would obviously be no reason for different treatment. But just because vaccinated people can transmit doesn't mean they are as likely to.
What an interesting choice of examples.... Can't help but thinking one of these things is not like the others.
So, no -- I do not have to accept the hypothetical, strawman consequences that you fantasize about.
So I assume you agree to not come running to the hospital when you get infected, taking away beds for other patients who shouldn't have to suffer because of your ignorance?
Oh, and getting COVID and needing hospitalization absolutely does not mean that I will be taking away a bed from someone who needs it. You're so desperate to spew your hate that you actually made that strawman assumption; that's laughable. If you were actually honest, you would know that after the shortage of beds and ventilators, hospitals are now much, much better prepared to handle spikes in hospitalizations.
It appears the only ignorance here is yours, buddy.
Agree?
This is the same way John Stewart and Stephen Colbert hid behind, "I'm just a comedian." It's a great strategy if you can pull it off.
What's scarier are the persons who for the law are considered entertainment, but conduct themselves on Fox as if they're real journalists, and lie and deceive with impunity. If Joe Rogan could disrupt the right media with that, the same way John and maybe Stephen did on the left side, the world would be a better place for sure.
I’d say a special mention in the first amendment is notable.
https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/journalists_privil...
Rogan feels like he wants it both ways. He wants to pick the people for his show and get credit when he picks well, but if people dislike one of his picks he would suddenly like to be seen as 'mixing it up' or a "cage fight commentator." He won't really own a view (or the idea of wanting to expose people to particular thinkers), but he would rather bring people on in a way where he's seen as minimally responsible for the uncomfortable content he produces.
The format he uses lets him do this, empowering everything from Ivermectin promoters to white nationalists, while allowing him to feign that he’s not doing that
I lean more towards he’s looking for affirmation to be contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian.
If he was looking for the best ideas, he would of had a completely different set of guests.
They like Joe because he is also a fundamentally dishonest asshole.
As evidence, you say you are not here to defend Joe, but you wrote multiple posts defending Joe. You’re a dishonest little asshole. Just like Joe.
Then how can you honestly believe he's just looking for the best ideas?
If he was just some random dude none of this would matter. But with 11 million followers, sometimes this "my youtube research is just as valid as your scientific research" attitude can do real harm, as it did with vaccines.
The more you claim to be the one to take seriously, the less serious anyone will want to take you. Especially if you do it in a negative fashion blocking others rather than putting out your own message. There's far more to influence, trust, and authenticity than claiming you're right or deducing everything to some rational puzzle, and perhaps that's the biggest lesson of all.
I listen to his show sometimes, and while I've heard him have guests on from all sides of these issues, at no point have I heard him be anything less than a thoughtful, critical interviewer.
If that's "drivel", we need more drivel. I'll certainly take it over everything I see on cable news, which is laser-focused on advancing a particular narrative, and demonizing anything and anyone who might deviate from that narrative.
1. I interview a handful of people who have differing opinions on what it takes to lead a SaaS startup who have all had successful exist, but have differing opinions on key issues. Maybe throw in a few people who have experience working in that type of environment, but maybe not leading, if you want a little more variety.
2. I interview someone who has led a successful exit like in (1), but I also interview a full time commission visual artist who has never worked at a SaaS startup. I give both their ideas on how to run a SaaS startup equal weight, even when the visual artist isn't making any sense in the context of the conversation or is spewing nonsense in the context of the conversation.
Joe does (2). They are both "free speech", but only one is actually useful.
Lol.
Having some people not appear on a given podcast is not a "free speech" issue. Choosing to not be a dangerous idiot by having dangerous idiots on your show during a pandemic is not "censorship" or anything remotely close to censorship as it is commonly, and correctly, understood.
Conflating criticism with calls for government censorship is a dishonest rhetorical tactic.
I'm not confused.
> Choosing to not be a dangerous idiot by having dangerous idiots on your show during a pandemic is not "censorship" or anything remotely close to censorship as it is commonly, and correctly, understood.
When someone decides for me that "dangerous idiots" should not have a voice -- for whatever justification -- I'm against them having the ability to act on that impulse. The wonderful thing about free speech is that if you don't like it, you're free not to listen to it.
Every censor has started from the premise that they're doing good. I don't agree with your opinions, and I'm not so feeble-minded as to be unable to decide for myself what I see.
Let me just reiterate this, on the one-in-a-million chance that you actually don't get it: Joe Rogan can restrict the speech of whomever he fucking wants, for ANY reason, and that does NOT constitute any actual restraint on anyone's "free speech" rights.
Ha ha.
Notably, free speech absolutism is impossible to refute if everyone is arguing in good faith. Since quite a few influential political actors are demonstrably not, and are following well-defined tactics dating back to various fascist regimes such as those who produced WWII, it is insane to pretend everyone is arguing in good faith.
And it is both instructive and dismaying to see that the people most obviously arguing in bad faith have a tendency to insist, and get others to insist, that free speech must be absolute and that everyone must be taken with the assumption that they're arguing in good faith.
Tactically, it makes perfect sense, but it's a hell of an exploit.
There is no workable censorship regime that does not devolve into ideological warfare.
Also the absolutist position ignores the limited capacity both in raw time and cognitively to take in information and that pushing people to do better about not spewing out or supporting bullshit is also free speech..
The whole "both sides" thing is the _worst_ of cable news and why I signed off years ago. Does the Sun orbit the Earth? Let's get a crazy person on and see. It's okay because we'll give an expert a few minutes too.
OP doesn’t claim Rogan should be de-platofrmed. Just that pushing batshit theories is an explanation for his declining influence. I enjoy watching flat earthers from time to time. But I’m not going to make it a part of my information diet.
Some Polio vaccines were contaminated with SV40 for years, and it does, in fact, alter human DNA.
For COVID-19, there have been at least 2 major cases of live virus vaccine contamination and recall. In the case of the Sputnik vaccine in Brazil and South Africa, there are claims that at least some made it into patients.
And then the "Baltimore Factory" testimony before Congress included company executives admitting to making ~100 million contaminated doses, more than the number of safe doses they had produced.
So this "don't mind him, he does conspiracies" attitude isn't doing anything except getting nods from those that don't need convincing, and proving to skeptics that you have a knowledge gap, whether it's ultimately relevant or true (or not).
I don't think it's currently happening happening here (at a minimum, adenovirus doesn't alter your DNA), but I also think it's just as reckless to imply that any concerns aren't legitimate or that it's impossible.
>>polio vaccine administered from 1955–1963 was contaminated with simian virus 40 (SV40). The virus came from the monkey kidney cell cultures used to produce the vaccine. Most, but not all, of the contamination was in the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). Once the contamination was recognized, steps were taken to eliminate it from future vaccines. There have been many questions as to the effects on people who received the contaminated vaccine. SV40 has biological properties consistent with a cancer-causing virus, but researchers have not conclusively established whether or not it could cause cancer in humans. Studies of groups of people who received polio vaccine during 1955–1963 provide evidence of no increased cancer risk.
>>However, because these epidemiologic studies are sufficiently flawed, the Institute of Medicine's Immunization Safety Review Committee concluded that the evidence was inadequate to conclude whether or not the contaminated polio vaccine caused cancer. In light of the biological evidence supporting the theory that SV40-contamination of polio vaccines could contribute to human cancers, the committee recommends continued public health attention in the form of policy analysis, communication, and targeted biological research.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK221112/
That sounds like a load of nonsense?
>sciencebasedmedicine dot org
>> This one popped up at that online repository of all things quackery, NaturalNews.com
lol, pot, meet kettle.
Why can't you trust the science?
Simian virus 40 DNA sequences in human brain and bone tumours
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9776221/
Sequence analyses of human tumor-associated SV40 DNAs and SV40 viral isolates from monkeys and humans
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9584955/
Human cytomegalovirus major immediate early gene product can induce SV40 DNA replication in human embryonic lung cells
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2173262/
Phylogenetic analysis of polyomavirus simian virus 40 from monkeys and humans reveals genetic variation
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15308725/
SV40 DNA in human osteosarcomas shows sequence variation among T-antigen genes
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9311596/
Natural simian virus 40 strains are present in human choroid plexus and ependymoma tumors
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7571441/
> That sounds like a load of nonsense?
"Based on these limitations, the committee concludes that the evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between SV40-containing polio vaccines and cancer."
There is literally no reason to bring this up in relation to COVID vaccines. First, this was a contamination issue with polio vaccines between 1955 and 1961, long since fixed (and unlikely to happen again, as it is now much easier to detect this kind of contamination). Second, there has never been any good evidence that the 'contaminated' vaccines ever did anyone any harm.
>In light of the biological evidence supporting the theory that SV40-contamination of polio vaccines could contribute to human cancers, the committee recommends continued public health attention in the form of policy analysis, communication, and targeted biological research.
>long since fixed (and unlikely to happen again, as it is now much easier to detect this kind of contamination)
Multiple vaccines have already been recalled due to contamination, after they passed initial qaqc.
How does that make it unlikely that contaminated products don't go undetected?
My point isn't that vaccine's shouldn't be taken.
It's that the same people that constantly complain about pharmaceutical companies taking shortcuts and behaving unethically, suddenly decide the same companies are infallible when it comes to a rushed development of a product, from which they are fully shielded from liability.
>There is literally no reason to bring this up in relation to COVID vaccines
When someone suggests a concern is scifi conspiracy theory nonsense, and that concern has actually historically happened, then it's absolutely relevant.
The scare tactics are bad enough, but don't try to trick people with lies and outright manipulation, and there won't be anything to call out.
Come on – this is just the standard ass-covering language in a scientific paper. "Further research is needed." By the nature of the case it's very hard to conclusively show that no-one has ever had a cancer caused by a 1960s Polio vaccine. But at present there is no good evidence that this has happened, as the paper that you linked to states very clearly.
Any medication can contain contaminants. I do not understand why you think that the mere abstract possibility that any given vaccine might contain contaminants is relevant to COVID vaccination efforts. This is like cautioning against people taking Aspirin because any given Aspirin pill might contain contaminants.
That's not a standard "further research needed" statement.
>the mere abstract possibility that any given vaccine might contain contaminants
Because other medicine isn't mandated, isn't developed in under a year, and isn't given statutory waivers of liability.
My point isn't "don't get vaccinated",
but that claiming "a vaccine altering human DNA is conspiracy theory nonsense" is a bad take, because it's factually wrong and has actually happened.
Right, and the Harvard Mark II had a moth that caused it to malfunction, therefore we can't trust the Apple M1.
This is the level of reasoning that anti-vaxers have sunk to. It's deliberate ignorance and sophistry.
Anti-vaxers aren't "asking questions". They aren't curious about actual reality. They are very confused people who want to maintain a simplistic (maybe naturalistic, who knows?) worldview and are increasingly twisted in knots and therefore filled with cognitive dissonance.
I personally don't like hunting down morons, but when they step on stage and refuse to yield, the should absolutely be mocked, shamed, and embarrassed, maybe even more so that they risk the health and safety of others with their idiocy. They didn't reason themselves into their positions, so I see no reason why we should try to reason them out.
Done.
Just like the chair you're sitting in is stationary according to your frame of reference, while from another it is hurtling through space.
There's no such thing as a "normal" frame of reference.
> the geocentricists tried to build mechanical models but the increasing number of epicycles was a big clue that the system was in fact heliocentric.
Not exactly, it was a big clue that the planets did not move in perfect circles. The mechanical models did not provide any evidence of heliocentrism. It was Galileo's observations of Venus that torpedoed the geocentric theory.
The Sun has a certain mass, the Earth has a certain mass, the center of the point of orbit of both (barycenter? That seems to be the right term) is inside of the Sun no matter what frame you hang out in. What am I missing?
Such as the word "sunrise" is very geocentric. We don't even have a word for the heliocentric term for the same thing. We also use geocentric phrases like "jets chasing the Sun" and "sundials track the movement of the Sun", etc.
Yes. It's what I've been talking about in this thread. You could always, of course, demand that the local TV station change the word "sunrise" to "when the Earth rotates until the Sun shines on the TV station", but I suspect that won't be successful.
A rotating reference frame is different. A local experiment can tell you whether you're rotating and how fast you're rotating.
[1] http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...
I bet you have. From your frame of reference, the Sun revolves around the Earth.
I also bet if I asked you "which direction should be a rocket be launched into earth orbit to minimize fuel consumption" you'll have to stop and think about it.
Props to Bernie for taking the battle to the middle ground though and not preaching only to the choir. He kind of got shit on for that as well.
Whether you like him or not, or agree with his views, is entirely subjective. But it's interesting to see how much control people want over others by the topics and conversation they want to prevent and suppress, and those actions speak far louder than words.
> When you have extremists on and don't challenge what they're saying, that _is_ pushing a narrative.
This is in spite of his politics.
There are plenty of people who are exposed to (far)left perspectives from his show - do you take issue with that?
You are evidently very unwilling to accept the claim, so I don't think anything said here will convince you otherwise, but perhaps it is meaningful that so many people are convinced of it.
Very few people have such trouble with his massive variety of guests, topics and politics; otherwise it wouldn't be the most popular podcast in the world.
An obvious example of this in action, is Jordan Peterson, who the left almost universally detests. He's neither alt-right nor far-right, and yet the left tries to slander and control him with that label constantly (bury him under fake labels). If you're not in total agreement with them, you're the enemy; that's widely the ethos of the intolerant left today. Rogan has given people like Peterson a large platform to speak through. That's the sort of thing the left hates Rogan for.
The biggest social media site is Facebook. Facebook is very right leaning.
The biggest cable news/punditry channel is Fox. Fox is _very_ right leaning.
The rest of cable news is mostly centrist, certainly not left. MSNBC is vaguely left, that's about it.
Radio is dominated by right-wing blowhards.
Where is my 95% exactly?
> They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.
would you consider biden left?
By US standards, he's a moderate. So no, still not left. And that's why he got elected.
It used to be the best when there was regulation that made sure equal amounts of attention were devoted to both sides of an issue with proper research.
What we have today are ideological echo chambers with some caricature of an opposing side, not actual debate.
I used to listen when there were an interesting guest just to hear them talk at length about their profession/passions, but it's no longer worth it if the cost is giving rogan a podium for his self-proclaimed-moron-disclaimed pot-stirring efforts.
That's like saying he has guests on both sides of the flat earth issue, except there are actual lives at stake.
The history of science is full of obviously right things that turned out be be wrong.
Even Einstein, who upended Newtonian Mechanics, rejected Quantum Mechanics, since "God doesn't play dice with the universe".
He is the least critical interviewer you can imagine. Being uncritical and hyped up is his trademark. He is Mr. Softball to the extent he is made of fun for it.
He is not thoughtful. He has talent of speaking endlessly and keeping it going endlessly.
Also, there seems to be a lot of judgement of the kind of person Joe Rogan is (conspiracy, etc) in the comments. I have never once listened to Joe Rogan to listen to Joe Rogan. The fact of the matter is he gets fantastic guests doing long form conversations. I only ever showed up for the guests. Generally also the case for many other podcasts, Lex Friedman, Tim Ferris, etc.... the value they bring is more the guests they attract and the space they create for the guest.
I guess it would be interesting to deep fake the voice of the host and see how many people actually cared about the host.
The Life Scientific
Ted Interview
How I Built This
TWIML
This Week in Virology
Freakonomics
The Changelog
And Lex Fridman and Tim Ferris have their own shows
Coincidentally, around the same time he went to Spotify, I started getting really annoyed at his butting in and his opinions on matters that his guests know a lot more about. I've caught a clip or two on YT in recent months and I skip over any parts where the camera is on Joe, so I can just hear the guest.
I wonder how good GPT would be at generating questions to a guest based on their work and interests. Having a GPT driven interviewer could be quite interesting as a gimmick.
That being said, I've lost interested mostly because his guests have been less interesting (lately, mostly his comedian/fighter friends).
BTW, anyone has good podcasts in the same vein to recommend?
Rogan is against wearing masks but demands all of his guests to be tested for COVID-19 before going on his show which is kind of contradictory.
https://www.youtube.com/user/PowerfulJRE
so his reach grows, but not as fast as it used to be.
probably the same journalist who write about climate change