Joe Rogan Returns to Spotify — and His Comfort Zone — With New Podcast Interview
Joe Rogan’s back — and the same as he ever was.
The embattled podcaster posted his first new interview since the controversy surrounding some of his anti-vax guests blew up.
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Despite Rogan’s statement that he’d look to have more experts with “differing opinions,” his first new interview after a weeklong absence of new episodes was returning guest Andy Stumpf, a retired Navy SEAL, wingsuit pilot and podcast host.
The duo largely avoided anything controversial — topics included familiar stuff like shadowbanning, military culture, jiujitsu, sports injuries and lockdowns. Though, the Spotify situation did come up.
“I put out a video a couple days ago, other than that, not much I can do,” Rogan said. “When you’re hearing it from people who are losing the information attention game — people like CNN — when they’re calling for other networks or shows to be censored or limited, it’s like, ‘Just do better.'”
Rogan’s previous podcast was an MMA fight breakdown on Jan. 27. On Sunday, he posted a nine-minute monologue discussing the controversy and pointing out, among other things, that what has been fair game to discuss regarding COVID-19 has evolved over time (such as the lab leak theory and the effectiveness of masks).
To be fair, Rogan didn’t pledge that his very next guest would counter the misinformation spread by previous anti-vax guests, such as Robert Malone, but rather said, “I would like to talk to some people that have differing opinions on those podcasts in the future. We’ll see.”
Still, even Stumpf gently asked if Rogan has considered having somebody on to directly counter the previous misinformation on his podcast and Rogan admitted, “There’s quite a few of these guys that are highly educated doctors with different perspectives [who could be future guests], but they’re more fact-based than narrative-based,” but griped that such guests tend to just echo conventional talking points.
One option who would seem to be right up Rogan’s alley, however, is physician and podcaster Dr. Zubin Damania, who has challenged the wisdom of many aspects of the government’s pandemic strategy, and recently did a point-by-point rebuttal of Malone’s Rogan interview on Dr. Peter Attia’s The Drive podcast (listen, below).
Meanwhile, Jon Stewart, on his most recent The Problem With Jon Stewart podcast, said Rogan was being targeted with “overblown rhetoric” and that he didn’t “see Rogan as an ideologue in any way.” He noted a Rogan interview where a guest corrected the podcaster on an anti-vax talking point, and Rogan looked it up online and admitted he was wrong.
“Tucker Carlson, in that situation, never would have looked it up and would have given that look he gives like somebody is giving him a confusion enema, like they’re just firing confusion up his ass,” Stewart said. “Joe is like, ‘Oh, I didn’t get that,’ and, to me, that’s a person that you can engage with. He has four-hour conversations that are expansive and, he may say some things that are misinformation and may platform people that you think are wrong, but to single that out as something so egregious — I think there are dishonest bad actors in the world and identifying those is so much more important to me.”
So far, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills and Nash, India Arie, Brené Brown, Roxane Gay and Mary Trump have all left Spotify in protest of Rogan’s content. Stewart said such performative gestures were a mistake.
“Eric Clapton is on platforms that [Rogan’s on] and he’s fucking psycho,” Stewart said of the rock legend and vehement anti-vaxxer. “Don’t leave. Don’t abandon. Don’t censor. Engage.”
Spotify’s CEO also reportedly defended Rogan’s show at a company town hall this week.
“There are many things that Joe Rogan says that I strongly disagree with and find very offensive,” Daniel Ek said, according to a transcript published by The Verge. “If we want even a shot at achieving our bold ambitions, it will mean having content on Spotify that many of us may not be proud to be associated with. Not, anything goes. But there will be opinions, ideas and beliefs that we disagree with strongly and even makes us angry or sad. I want to remind everyone of our mission. We want to get to 50 million creators and a billion users. And to be a true platform and achieve this ambition, it’s really critical that creators are able to use their voice independently. And it’s also critical that we have diverse voices on our platform. We’re not in the business of dictating the discourse that these creators want to have on their shows.”
During the company’s earnings call this week, Ek acknowledged it was “too early to know” what kind of subscriber churn could be attributed to users dropping their subscriptions because of Rogan, who “has a massive audience” on the platform.
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