The Joe Rogan Experience Podcasts

Ultimately it always filters down to the same thing - a number on a piece of paper.

If Spotify was to cancel their contract with JR, not only would they have to eat their $100m but they would lose the largest, hardest-to-reach and most coveted demographic in the media - young men. They would also drive that audience directly into the hands of competitors like Rumble or Substack.

Some short responses to Joe Rogan's latest "apology" video from his friends Sam Harris and Jocko Willink.

samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/273-joe-rogan-and-the-ethics-of-apology

youtube.com/watch?v=6cIbpX_EulQ

Generally a good video from Joe I think in response to the controversy. I disagree with some of it though. This idea that certain words can not be used in "any context" is not an idea I share with him. Especially by particular groups of people. That is just not how I view language and I have yet to see any good argument for viewing or treating language in that way. Shame I will never get the chance to debate him on that one :)

"I can only imagine his kindergarten teachers trying to get him to shut up. He does talk a lot. And he keeps talking. And I will keep listening not because he is perfect, flawless, or right about everything - but actually because he is not. Not perfect, flawless or right about everything. He makes mistakes. He is a person, a human being like me, and like me he is trying to learn, grow and be better. And like me he is failing sometimes along the way." - Jokko

I see spotify have now removed a total of 113 episodes - most of them quite early on. I have not looked for a source to listen to the removed episodes yet. But I will probably make a point of doing just that. Nothing is ever really deleted on the internet after all.

Is that because it is a conspiracy?

One of the fallacies people commit is the idea that it's possible to coldly calculate the P&L implications of keeping versus binning Rogan. Any calculation like that requires a lot of subjective assumptions and projections and is extremely unscientific. The decision to keep Rogan is partly financial but a big part of the decision is human judgment.

Secondly, anyone who is stupid enough to rely on Joe Rogan for medical advice deserves to get the consequences. It's called Darwinism. No adult gets to decide what's best for another adult. We don't close down all roads because some idiots blindly walked out into traffic and got run over. The vast majority of people who tune into Rogan would trust their own Doctor first and foremost.

Why would you raid the vets medical cabinet?

Isn't that unintentionally a good thing? All they want is to be left alone in their little cesspit. Grim and boring is all those people want and it's not harming anyone. But to hear the way some people portray it there will be concentration camps if such sites are allowed to exist for too long.

Doesn't that depend on what "Accountability" covers? If "Accountability" includes de-platforming, then that is not free speech.

I think of Speakers Corner in Hyde Park in London as being the great symbol of free speech. Every nutter can stand on a box and spout off about any old nonsense they want to. It's mostly nonsense but there is something pure and beautiful about the way anyone can say anything, of course as long as they don't incite violence or break the law (can't believe I have to add that last but some people are disingenuous and pedantic).

Speakers Corner is indeed amazing at times. I remember watching this 1+ hour documentation about one guy who speaks there. And as I recall I had my mouth hanging oven from only 60 seconds in and my eye brows raised to the back of my head for most of the rest of it:

youtube.com/watch?v=oJclZes9hxA

And yet despite this guy spouting some of the most hateful racism I have ever heard - as you say there is a strange beauty about that level of free speech all the same.

Interestingly I think Rogan himself is quite triggered by free speech issues. In a good way. There are a couple of guests he has on - including the two that caused the Covid Controversies - that he probably would not have even heard of or had on were it not for the bigger social platforms banning them. Had Malone not been banned and silenced for example - I wonder would he have been invited on at all.

But what Rogan appears to say before during and since that interview - is that it does not matter how right or wrong someone like Malone is in his claims. The fact that someone that qualified to speak on the issue could be silenced for doing so is obscene to him. Rogan often cites the same line Sam Harris does which is that the antidote to bad science or bad conversation - is more and better science and conversation. And right or wrong in what he says Malone has more than earned the right to have his position heard. But it is attacked under this new rubric of "dangerous to public health".

Sam Harris has often done the same thing too. Perhaps having learned more about the guests thoughts and ideas he later regretted some of them. But at the time he has had guests on and platformed them for no other reason than he saw it as a free speech issue. Having Charles Murray on his podcast is the obvious example that jumps to mind. But Harris' reasoning behind inviting him on that podcast are very sensible and thought out.

Yes sure and criminals in prison are free to sleep or not sleep depending on when they want to. They are free to eat meals or not eat meals depending on their preferences. It's quite simple. Free speech means allowing people to say things you don't like, without trying to co-ordinate campaigns designed to ultimately silence them. If you are trying to get someone's opinions shut down even though they are not breaking a law, that is not free speech.