In 2020, Joe Rogan did an episode of his podcast, a 5 hour conversation with Alex Jones. In 2015, he did an interview with Milo Yiannopoulos.
They are among 42 episodes that - surprise! - vanished from the collection when Spotify paid over $100 million to Rogan for rights to his podcasts.
Keep that in mind when Spotify acts shocked to discover that Rogan might be doing things which are... controversial.
Rogan is sort of emblematic of the hard road many ambitious folks have in show business. A modestly successful comedian and entertainer, Rogan had a small role on the series NewsRadio in the nineties, a somewhat longer gig hosting Fear Factor on NBC, and some niche success as a standup comic - it's hard to quantify success with comics these days, in part because while they may do well enough playing the 2nd or 3rd largest club in Phoenix, the streaming service level of desperation for comic content provides many opportunities to be filmed.
I'm not trying to minimize his success, but as careers go, it may not have been the kind of thing you planned on when you started out.
I mention all of this because Rogan has always been something of a specific draw - not so much a runaway success as a solid, reasonably well liked genre specific star, that genre being a sort of scruffy, working guy icon, with some appeal in his own demographic of 25-54 white guys (hence the added gigs hosting, say, MMA fights on tv), but not necessarily a lot outside of that.
There's a defense of Rogan's podcasts - I'm getting to them - that insists that critics are attacking Rogan's audience, a putdown of all white men wrapped in the takedown of a widely followed (perhaps even wildly liked, though I'm not clear on what that even means) podcast. So let's be clear: I don't blame the audience.
The problem with the podcast is Rogan himself.
Rogan hosts the podcast much the way one would expect for a middle aged comic/reality show host to do (don't take my word for it - watch Andy Cohen) - bring up a topic, bring out a guest or two, ask some questions, bing bang boom, you've got a podcast. Get in the game early enough, promote the hell out of yourself, grab some ziz by mouthing off a few times... and you too could be sitting on the podcast that attracts millions.
But you're late and you don't, and that's kind of the point: what Rogan's doing isn't genius, or even especially hard. It isn't, really, all that different from his overall career. It just happens to be the platform where he's managed to achieve the most reach, ever, of his - again, not being critical - modest success of a career. That's what Spotify paid $100 million for. It's also why we have a little bit of a problem.
The problem, really, is Rogan's minimalist approach to hosting and topics. The whole shtick, really is "I don't know a lot about this, let's talk to someone who does" and it has, as a rising total of pulled podcasts demonstrates, led to Rogan blithely allowing quacks, frauds, Nazis and racists to share, uncontested, questionable information and views which turn out to be, inaccurate, invalid, or simply too much. It has allowed Rogan himself to casually offer up insulting slang as, one supposes, he probably thought was no big deal in smaller setttings. It's a predictable problem that could have occurred to Spotify prior to purchase had Spotify's billionaire owner seen himself (who does, these days) as not just a pass through to audiences but a content provider with a role in determining the quality of the content.
The bottom line point - and it's breathtakingly obvious - is Rogan needs an editor. A supervising producer. Someone, really, whose job exists to plan content, research guests, help prepare the host with questions, and identify potential potholes. It's the way GOOP needed actual medical advisors to point out that jade eggs might cause serious health problems inserted into your cooch.
This isn't hard. It's not world ending or anti-white guy to point out, in passing, that unsupervised, unmoderated Joe Rogan just spitballing on an interesting topic is likely to be what it, well, is: inaccurate, embarrassing, tactless, even offensive and dangerous. It's the problem created by social media where we all just assume we can do the same thing Chuck Todd does for NBC with a budget, a staff, and a Senior Producer. Content creation is hard, it needs structure and it needs, desperately, expertise. The alternative, as the Roganing of our discourse demonstrates, is a messy, often inaccurate, frequently maddening morass of dubious vitamin cures, "i'm no expert but" opinionating, and a lot of, as it turns out, dangerous misinformation.
It's not the audience, and, I'll say it... the problem ultimately isn't necessarily Joe Rogan - though I do think, as a grown person, it's fair to ask why "maybe I don't know a lot about this and should consult people who do" isn't simply a reasonable expectation of those who wish a central role in our discourse. But, hey, that's me. What I do know is, at some point, Spotify has to move to rein in the free for all of its podcasting plans, or continue, as Rogan demonstrated, to reap the whirlwind of every loose comment and off the cuff rant. Our discourse could use grown ups. And "I hate grown ups" looks fine on a college comic at an open mic... but it may be time for Joe Rogan to think about what maturing means.
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