"Left wing approved" Joe Rogan alternative

I think he is improving as an interviewer over time. But not at any great speed. It's a slow process. If you look at his first and last interviews with John Danaher for example - the latter was slightly better flow, less rigid, more fun. They covered the serious topics but also just had more of a laugh the second time around. Their conversation about who would win in a fight between a great cat, a grizzly bear, and a great ape was a good giggle.

His podcasts tend to follow a structure - but over time I think he has relaxed that structure a bit. Earlier on he seemed to basically be asking the exact same things of every guest in almost the exact same order. It had the feeling of his guest being just "plug and play" and incidental. You could look at the time stamp and pretty much know "Oh this is where he is going to ask about the meaning of life" or whatever.

But this rigidity is less so now more recently.

I hope he continues to improve as time goes on. Despite his robotic tone which has led his fans to suggest he is actually a robot installed here by visiting aliens to learn human behavior and society - over time he has come across as someone who is genuinely engaged, genuinely cares, is deeply emotional and very thoughtful. I have almost zero interest in Chess for example - but I have really enjoyed all the recent podcasts he has done on that topic and the guests he chose to have on.

Just listened to it myself. The whole Transgender area is something I have not gotten into and know almost nothing about. So I genuinely can not comment on the quality of much that he said or how he said it. Indirectly due to people like Rogan I have gotten the impression that it's an area where push back or questioning is either not encouraged, or positively suppressed. So if nothing else I guess it is good the guy is out there making a documentary. If the only thing it achieves is to counter any "chilling" effect on conversation - that alone is useful.

But I just got the feeling that he might not be the best person in the world to be that "champion". But I am so ignorant of that topic of conversation and have absolutely no dog in it - that this is all just vague impressions I felt arising in me as I listened. Some day I will sit down and immerse myself in the two sides of that conversation. Maybe that way madness lies :) The closest I have come to anything even remotely related to gender topics is that I raise my children in the most gender neutral way I can. In that I do not do things - or not do things - with them based on their gender but based on them as individuals. If I bake little pink fairy cakes or play with dolls - I try that with them all. If I train them martial arts, archery, rifles and hunting - I do that with them all. My daughter could write a plug and change the spark plugs in a car by age 7. I have 45 year old male friends who can not do that :)

If one of my kids ever comes home and tells me they feel they are not the gender they were assigned at birth or that they phenotype expresses - I at least know this will not be because I enforced some gender based structure on them that did not fit with their individuality - and that their feeling they are the "wrong" gender is not based on them in fact living the "wrong" life path, hobbies, interests and ways to meaning.

I did try to focus on his points and arguments more than statistics he was pulling out of thin air as "guesses". Throwing out a word like "millions" based on nothing is poor form. But they do not undermine his actual arguments really. One of his arguments was related to allowing children before the age of consent or the age of reason to influence or dictate choices that might - for example - impinge or remove their ability to procreate as adults. If that is what is happening (again - me 100% ignorant here) then that's a useful point to make regardless of whether we are talking 1000s or millions.

Certainly the latter half of the podcast had nothing impressive in it. It was just a conversation rehashing some of the worst anti gay marriage arguments that we went over and over in this forum during the Irish referendum. Rogan pushed back on most of it but not all and did well enough. There were people writing rebuttals to those arguments here on boards who did better than Rogan did. But written and spoken word is different. Who knows if any of those writers on here would have been as coherent or cogent on a live podcast. I have seen amazing writers fall apart in live settings like debating on stage or on radio for example.